#9 - Cyberbullying - How to Prevent it in the Classroom

Cyber-bullying is very serious, especially in this day and time. Technology is everywhere, you can't escape it, so it's important that adults in all situations know how you could prevent cyberbullying from happening. I looked at two separate articles for my research. The first being Cyberbullying Ramps Up in Middle School and the second was an article by Scholastic, Cyberbullying: How to Make it Stop, on ways to prevent it from happening.
In the first article, it discusses ways that when children transition from Elementary School to Middle School, they're opened up to a whole new cybernetic world. Verbal and Physical bullying declines, but cyber-bullying goes up.

They also divided up students who were bullied into four groups (based on research done on 1,180 students):

11% were frequent victims.

29% were occasional victims of traditional bullying

10% were occasional victims of traditional and cyber-bullying. 

Half were infrequent victims of bullies. 

The bullies were divided up into categories too:

5% bullied frequently

26% occasional traditional bullies

69% bullied infrequently

They found that girls were more often the targets of cyber-bullying, verbal, and relational bullying. Boys were more often the targets of physical bullying. 

The first article mentioned a few ways one might prevent bullying. They suggested implementing anti-bullying programs in the school, ways to use social media responsibly, and the parents should  talk to their children about cyber safety. They also suggest supervising children while they are online and using mobile devices. 

The second article goes more in depth about ways to prevent cyber-bullying specifically. Scholastic's first major point is recognizing it as soon as possible. They use the example of Facebook teasing. You should take that teasing seriously when someone "repeatedly harasses, mistreats, or makes fun of another person". 

They stress the idea that school is the center of a child's life. If children are so worried about being bullied/cyber-bullied, they can't focus on their school work and their grades/social life suffer. "If schools are using technology to deliver education and instruction, they have a responsibility to educate students so they use it correctly" 

Scholastic recommends stressing the importance of children/students reporting any type of bullying. They suggest telling the child to screenshot the evidence and sharing it with an adult, otherwise the insult or comments could be deleted before action can take place. They want you to break the myth that the bully is the cool one and it's all the victim's fault.