Texting, Cyberbullying and Schools...

The New York Times published an interesting article on June 27, 2010. The title of the article is "Online Bullies Pull Schools Into the Fray." The article can be found at:

www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/style/28bully.html?hp

Schools have many tasks and goals to accomplish throughout the school year. The tests must be graded, and the homework must be assigned, but should cyber bullying be addressed? This is a debatable topic that is becoming increasingly popular as younger children log onto many different social networking sites such as Facebook or Myspace. When well known social websites such as Facebook were founded, they were intended to be used by only one specific group and/or age of people. For Facebook, the only people that were expected to log on were college students. Today, Facebook is used by millions, ranging from kids just entering middle school to adults way past college.



Due to the number of students that are logging on to these websites, Cyber bullying is growing rapidly and is spreading into schools across the nation. A long time ago, if you had something mean to say to someone, you would have to go up right to their face and say it. Not only is face to face conversation more emotional because you are in front of the other person, it is also more dangerous, because the person starts a physical fight with you. Now, bullying someone is as easy as hitting the send button. Cyber bullying is fast, efficient, and safe for the attacker because he or she is hidden behind a computer screen. Even though the victim is not being physically harmed, the potential to cause devastation and suffering is just as likely to occur in person compared to online.



Even though internet bullying takes place in cyberspace, that does not stop the carnage to continue in schools. Many fights that are held on websites like Facebook, Myspace, and Formspring, end at school in a nasty face to face confrontation. So the question is, do schools have the right to mediate fights that occur on the internet? Do they have the right to punish the attackers, or defend the victims? This heated debate is growing in numbers as more and more students log on after school. What do you think about this issue? Feel free to leave a question, comment, or concern below.

Who am I talking to again?

The internet is an exciting platform to communicate and interact with friends, family, co-workers, and even complete strangers. Even though it seems safe, and seems to be friendly, fun, and flirty, can actually turn into a persons worst nightmare.

Excerpt from The Huffington Post Technology (5/12/20010);
A 37-year-old Texas man has been jailed for allegedly using text messaging to contact and solicit naked photos from his teenage son's female friends.

According to NBC, the unnamed man sent "numerous" text messages, to which a total of three girls responded with explicit photos of themselves.

Police report that two of the three teens were under 16 years old, and one was under 14 years of age. "Investigators said the girls may have been duped into thinking they were sending the photos to a classmate, not a 37-year-old man," NBC writes.

(huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/12/sexting-dad-accused-of-so_n_574037.html)



There is nothing so different about the 3 girls involved in this scandal than any other group of high school girls. They are young, they are innocient, and they haven't been in these situations before, so they do not always know what the right choice is. So whose fault is this? The father was absolutely in the wrong, faking his identity in a pathetic attempt to gain explicit pictures of the teens. The Internet is not always as it appears to be. You may think you are talking to a certain person, but unless you are right next to them, face to face, you might just be talking to a dangerous and/or perverted stranger. For responible parenting, awareness and technology is a must.

What do you think about this story? Do you have an opinion on whose fault this was? Do you have views on what the punishment should be? Feel free to leave a question or comment in the box below.

More on Formspring...

Formspring.me, a social media tool as well as similar websites in which members/users are allowed to anonymously pose questions for others to answer publicly.

In truth, these social media tools are little more than rumor mills that provide users with a platform to vent their likes and dislikes about anything or anyone with total immunity.

A good portion of the content relates to the latest movies, music and the everyday things that effect kid’s lives. Yet it is also a breeding ground for malicious gossip, venomous falsehoods, terrifying threats and degrading comments that can make a kid’s life unbearable. All in all, it is simply the result of one or a group of kids having it in for another kid. That’s it in a nutshell.

In all likelihood, this appears to be the case of 17-year-old Alexis Pilkington who succumbed to the bombardment of false accusations and took her own life.

Undoubtedly, cyberbullying is one of the most terrifying problems parents of teenage children face today. The death of Alexis Pilkington is by no means some isolated incident. It occurs a lot more often than you think – especially when a good many of the cases of teenage suicide resulting from cyberbullying go unreported.

Formspring.me, like numerous other social networking sites, claimed 50 million visitors last month. Yet even more staggering is how few parents actually realize what their kids are up to on these sites. Even if you are not a computer savvy parent, you can talk to your child about these sites and the potential consequences of cyberbullying. Good parenting and supervision can make a world of difference.

Another way to keep your kids safe on line and prevent minor incidents from becoming major problems is by installing surveillance software on your child’s computer or mobile phone. While there are quite few good solutions on the market, I prefer to go with the experts, PC Magazine, who tout FamilySafe’s Sentry Parental Control software as the most comprehensive and effective software of its kind -- which automatically alerts parents, via E- mail or mobile phone texting, the moment a child encounters inappropriate material.

In the world we live in today, good kids from good families are just as vulnerable to the problems presented in the cyber-world as every other kid. All said, being a good parent is undoubtedly the best way to keeps kids safe on the Internet. It’s also the best way for keeping kids like Alexis Pilkington out of the headlines

Robert Nadler
Health & Happiness Columnist
www.Examiner.com

Cyberbullying and Formspring

Let’s all be aware of Formspring.me, a new social networking site.

Excerpt from CNET News;
“Formspring.me, is a social media tool that allows users to anonymously ask questions for others to publicly answer. Users get a unique URL that points their friends (or foes) to a simple form that reads, "Ask me anything." But, of course, the simplest things can sometimes be the most problematic…But, worse, they can also fill a user's in-box with hate mail, harassment, or other inappropriate statements.” (news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-20001513-2.html)

17 year old Alexis Pilkington was a normal girl. She had many friends, got good grades, and was an important player on her high school's soccer team in West Islip, NY. None of that mattered on March 21, 2010 when Alexis took her own life after receiving countless hurtful, degrading comments and horrifying threats on social networking site Formspring.



The bullying didn't even stop after Alexis was pronounced dead. A group was created on Facebook for friends and family of Alexis to talk with each other, share stories, and comfort each other to cope with the tragedy. Cyber-bullies took this as an opportunity to write painful messages to make the friends and family of Alexis suffer more.

If police determine cyberbullying was a cause of Alexis' death, criminal charges could be made to the people making the comments and threats. Since the suicide, 4,600 teenagers have pledged to boycott the cyberbullying platform that Formspring truly is. Formspring claims to have had 50 million unique visitors last month.

Awareness is key…so is parental supervision. With new technology and new sites, such as Formspring, keeping up is increasingly more difficult for parents. We advocated awareness. It’s also important to implement parental management tools. What’s starting to look more like an epidemic, can only be addressed by these two measures.

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