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High-Tech Bullies
Mariah Lopez, 12, didn’t have much to cheer about after cheerleading tryouts last month. Girls started a mean rumor about her. The tale spread throughout her school, where more lies started. Soon Mariah started to receive disturbing text messages and calls from numbers she didn’t recognize. When the messages turned into threats, Mariah reached out to adults for help. She told her parents and contacted her school principal.
Today, the bully battles have moved to a new frontier-cyberspace. Using emails, instant messages, websites, and cell phones, cyberbullies deliberately harm or threaten others with their identities hidden behind computer their playground predecessors.
Bullying by the Numbers
Criminal-justice professors Justin Patchin and Sameer Hinduja surveyed 1,500 kids aged 10 to 17. They report that about one-third of the kids claimed to have been cyberbullied. Sue Limber and Roin Kowalski, researchers and teachers at Clemson University in South Carolina, recently finished a study of 3,767 students in grades six through eight. They found the most popular method of cyberbullying is instant messaging. Mean messages in chat rooms, emails, and on websites were close behind. Limber and Kowalski also found that girls were twice as likely as boys to be the victims of attacks.
That's E-Nough!
Several states either have laws or are working on laws that require school districts to ban cyberbullying and punish students who are involved. But cracking down on cyberbullying is challenging. Some officials question whether schools can legally punish students for those actions.
Finding out the identity of the bully and getting kids to report a problem pose additional problems. "It is difficult for someone who is being cyberbullied to know who is doing it because identities can often be hidden or false", Limber says. If you are a victim, she advises, ask an adult for help.
Something to Cheer About
Mariah was thankful that her parents and principal got involved. After the cyberbullies were identified, her principal confronted them. Mariah’s school district, which is in Highland, Utah, voted to add cyberbullying to its antibullying rules. Her school’s efforts could give other kids something to cheer about.
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