PARENTS' CORNER | Cyberbullying: Then and Now
by Anthony J.
Varni
Flashback to January
2005, when the Principal Advisory Committee of
a small parochial school in central California
faced an unfamiliar crisis among its seventh
grade class.
A new social
networking site had become popular among many
of the seventh grade students. There was an age
limit of 14, but it was not enforced, so the
12-year-old seventh graders had no problem
setting up their own pages on the site and
sending messages back and forth, along with
pictures and comments for everyone to see.
This new cyber-communication seemed
innocent enough, until a couple of seventh
grade girls posted nasty comments about one of
their female classmates on the site.
Another student printed the messages and
brought them onto the school campus and showed
it to other classmates, who did not have access
to the Website.
The student had been
“cyberbullied,” although the term was so new
that no one knew to use it.
The student
targeted by the online harassment was hurt and
depressed. She stayed home from school for days
because she was convinced that everyone hated
her and had seen the comments posted
online.
Parents Disagree
When they
saw a copy of the print-out, the victim’s
parents were stunned by the hurtful things
written by the girls, who had been their
daughter’s classmates since pre-school.
The parents of the “bullies,” the girls
who posted the comments, felt that everything
was blown out of proportion, that their
daughters never intended for the victim to see
the posts; they were just being normal girls
who occasionally talk about other girls—that’s
what girls do, right?
The Principal
Advisory Committee was called to address the
situation. I and the other parents and staff
members on the committee all agreed that the
incident was terrible, but we couldn’t agree
about how to address the situation. Some of the
members acknowledged that their children had
their own pages on the Website, but they
checked them regularly and found the site a
good window into the thoughts and activities of
their teens. Other members vowed that they
would never allow their children access to such
a social network.
All of them wondered
what could be done at the school level, since
most of the comments were written away from the
campus, then printed and brought into
school.
Missing a Teachable Moment
The
principal tried to do the right thing—she
brought the parties together to discuss the
situation. She pointed out to the bullies that
the comments were hurtful to the victim, but
she had no idea how traumatic such an incident
could be. She had nowhere to look for guidance
on how to deal with the situation.
It
was clearly an uncomfortable situation for
everyone involved. As word of the bullying
spread among the entire school community
through the very un-cyber parking lot network,
the principal seemed to want everyone to hug
and get over it, to get back to the way things
were before cyberbullying was a problem for the
school. She declared that all parties involved
were partially responsible for the incident;
they were all encouraged to apologize to each
other.
It was an opportunity missed, in
many ways, to really address the issue and
educate students and parents/guardians. Luckily
in this case, the class moved on to the eighth
grade together, and many of the girls now
attend the same local high school. Their
relationships are not perfect, but they gained
a better understanding of the promises and
perils of cyber technology.
If I could
go back with the knowledge I have now, I would
have urged the Committee to develop a strategy
to educate the students, teachers and
parents/guardians about the seriousness of
cyberbullying. I would want them to know that
young people tend to be uninhibited when
writing online, and can communicate more boldly
than in person. And the young people reading
comments online can interpret the words at an
exaggerated level that can lead to severe
anxiety, fear and depression.
What We Know
Now
Fast forward to January 2008—just
about every morning news program, talk show and
newspaper is reporting the tragedy of a
thirteen-year-old who committed suicide after a
flurry of comments on a social networking site
from a “cute boy,” who turned out to be an
adult neighbor, the mother of a former friend.
Thousands of schools probably go
through similar experiences—and many still face
these crises in a vacuum, with very little
guidance to manage the situation.
Fortunately, there are new tools that
can help educate students, teachers and
parents/guardians, explaining the seriousness
and possible affects of
cyberbullying.
One of them is Adina’s
Deck, a 30-minute video about
cyberbullying developed as part of a Master’s
Thesis at Stanford University’s School of
Education. (See box below.)
There is a
key moment in Adina's Deck in which Adina
talks about how she didn't want to hurt the
girl she said mean things about, and I believe
that this was also the case at our
school.
Every parent or guardian wants
happiness and safety for their children, and a
childhood free of harassment, in reality and in
cyberspace.
Ideas for Interacting!
Check out Adina’s Deck—you can stream the film online (and watch with your children or students) and find resources for parents/guardians, schools and students. Adina's Deck was developed based on research at three middle schools in northern California for Debbie Heimowitz's master thesis at Stanford University's School of Education, and written by Jason Azicri.
For more multimedia to watch together, visit our partner, NSTeens.org! The videos section has a great short video on cyberbullying: Terrible tEXt.
Anthony J. Varni lives in
central California. He is the father of the
actress who plays Adina in
Adina’s Deck
(two of his daughters are in the film). His
daughters were not involved in the incident
described above but his family was, and
remains, friends with the parents involved on
both sides of the situation.
