When looking back on your childhood, it’s probably easy to remember exactly who the bullies were at your school. Perhaps you were the target of their nasty comments, threats, or physical abuse. If you weren’t the target, you probably witnessed some of these exchanges or heard about them afterwards since word usually got around fast when a bully struck on his prey. In the past, bullies were almost always seen and heard. They found glory and pride in being the “tough guys” who everyone feared.
Most kids tried to avoid their bully. Some faked stomach aches to stay home, others hid out in the bathroom until their bully was out of sight. In either case, the thought of having to face another day of bullying caused great distress and often long-lasting trauma. It was not easy to shake a rumor started purposely to tarnish one’s reputation or to overcome the humiliation of being beaten up in front of friends, shoved in a locker for hours, or having your head dunked in a toilet. Even the most resilient children experienced some anxiety upon returning to school knowing they would have to face their bully again. Some kids confronted their bullies, hoping that by standing up to them they might get rid of them. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it made matters worse. Whether a child used the fight or flight approach with a bully is not to be judged in this article. The simple fact that they had this choice, however, will be one of focuses here.
Today, not all bullies are well known. In fact, some are not known at all. The cyber bully often keeps his or her identity hidden from others, which can cause even greater distress to his/her victims. When the bully cannot be identified, victims lose some control over the situation. Since they cannot choose to confront or even avoid their bully if they do not know who their bully is, they feel much more helpless.
Cyber bullies are not usually the people you would expect. They are different from the stereotypical bully of the past. For example, a cyber bully may be a girl spreading rumors about a former friend and secretively working hard to turn all of her friends against her. It could be a computer genius who changes student grades and tries to sabotage college entrance. It could even be a student setting a teacher up for legal problems because he was given a bad grade on a test. Clearly, cyber bullies do not hold the same stereotypes as bullies held in the past. Cyber bullies are usually nice kids from nice families who go online anonymously to “joke around” with other kids. The intention is usually not to cause great harm; however, unfortunately, this is often what occurs.
Cyber bullies can be found in many places. They may bully via text messaging on cell phones, post comments, blogs, or photos on Web sites, IM (instant message), or email. They may act alone, or they can enlist others to help them. For example, they can put up embarrassing pictures, or even use a tool like Photoshop to adjust a picture and make it look different causing a person to be embarrassed or humiliated. One of my patients reported that a girl at school cut and pasted her face onto another person’s nude body (which was less than ideal for a teenager) and then spread photos around school. Cyber bullies can also create fictitious Web sites or email addresses and pretend to be someone else so that they have the “freedom and comfort” to say abusive and hurtful things. In other words, their anonymity does not allow for the person to respond directly to their bullying behavior, which unfortunately increases the likelihood that they will engage in it. Even more unfortunate is the fact that their victims usually are left feeling paranoid and uncertain as to who they can trust. Lastly, cyber bullies can post negative or disrespectful comments on Web sites and ask others to join in to further the person’s pain. A friend told me that her daughter was inundated with hurtful comments on her MySpace page after her “best friend” enlisted several of their classmates to post all the things they did not like about her.
In all of these cases, children are using online access to harass, threaten, and humiliate each other on a regular basis. Cyber bullying is definitely on the rise and creating increased trauma to our children. The good news is that there are things you can do as parents to help. It is important that you ask your children if they have ever been a victim of cyber bullying. Often, kids do not tell their parents if they are for a variety of reasons.
First, some kids fear that parents will minimize the problem since no physical harm has been done to the child and the bully cannot be identified. Second, some kids worry that they will be blamed for the problem and that their parents will in turn take away their online privileges. Third, kids sometimes worry that their parents will take matters into their own hands. Most kids do not want parents to run interference when the cyber bully can be identified because they are afraid it will make matters worse. I usually encourage parents NOT to confront the bully or his/her parents unless they are absolutely certain that it will not cause greater trauma to their child. Instead, I encourage parents to report such instances to the school, someone in charge of the extracurricular activity where their child interacts with the bully, or the police (when severe enough). If the cyber bullying is taking place at school or a school-related activity, then the school can intervene.
Bullies (cyber and non-cyber) are easier to deal with today than in the past because laws have been created to protect our children from various forms of harassment at school. Legislation dictates the need to have a proper learning environment free of harassment. Safety comes first and most schools that have someone or something that interferes with the safety of their children very quickly are removed from the equation. No tolerance policies for weapons, harassment, and bullying have been adopted by most schools, which is why there has been such a large increase in the number of suspensions and expulsions in our schools today.
If your child is not opening up to you about cyber bullying, you can Google your child’s name to identify if there have been any instances where he or she has been harassed. This search will also indicate if your child has a public profile on the Web, which should immediately be removed or made private to ward off bullies and/or sexual predators. Parents should be familiar with their child’s Web site. Familiarize yourself with your child’s buddy list or top eight (list of top eight friends). Parents and children have the ability to block unwanted people or interaction on the Web, which can immediately reduce the amount of cyber bullying from a known offender.
I encourage kids and their parents to save all harassing comments and messages sent by a bully to be used as evidence in case you choose to file a report with the police. Law enforcement officers state that the header information on these messages should also be saved so that they can track the problem more easily. One of my patients was bullied both in person and online for over a year. She saved over one hundred pages of threatening comments and harassing messages sent by a small group of boys and girls at her school. With the support of her parents, she eventually decided to report the problem to the police. The police were able to intervene due to the evidence that she collected. They reprimanded the students and worked with the school to put into place an anti-bullying curriculum, which decreased the amount of bullying by over 70 percent at their school.