Health & Fitness
Back to School, Back to Cyberbullying?
Parents need to make sure their kids are bringing the same manners they are expected to use offline to the online world. The result will be less cyberbullying.
When I think of kids going online, sometimes, I think of parents throwing the car keys to their 16-year-old kids and saying: “Go for it.” If we didn’t require kids to learn the rules of the road and then follow the rules of the road, can you imagine the gnarly mess we’d have? For sure we’d have more fatalities with kids at the wheel texting, speeding, drinking, and so on.
The Internet is kind of a gnarly mess with kids going online doing whatever they please without parental oversight. Self-regulation and kids is an oxymoron. Kids are impulsive and lack the necessary self control because they are kids. The part of the brain that masters self control isn’t fully developed until the age of 24.
Code of Conduct Online
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Parents need to pay more attention to their children’s online behavior and make sure their kids follow a code of conduct online. If parents were paying more attention, we’d have a lot less cyberbullying and other inappropriate behaviors.
Cyberbullying
Find out what's happening in Sudburyfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
More than 25 percent of kids have been targets of cyberbullying; some studies suggest that number is closer to 50 percent. Obviously, even one in four is too many. Sadly, 15 percent of these kids are afraid to go to school. A full 62 percent of all teens have witnessed cruel behavior online, mostly on Facebook. A quarter of kids have posted mean comments online.
Where’s the parent disconnect? Only 10 percent of parents believe their teens have been targeted online.
How does cyberbullying impact Sudbury Schools?
The good news is that the cyberbullying numbers in Sudbury are substantially lower than the numbers from a Pew report in which “32 percent of teens have experienced some form of online harassment.”
According to Betsy Grams, the wellness curriculum specialist for Sudbury Public Schools, a fall 2010 survey of 939 students in grades 6th, 7th and 8th indicated less cyberbullying behavior. These students were asked: “During the past 12 months how many times has someone used the Internet, cellphone or other electronic device to bully, tease, threaten or spread rumors about you?” The results revealed that cyberbullying increases as kids get older, with 6th graders at 6 percent, 7th graders at 13 percent and 8th graders at 14 percent, with more girls than boys being cyberbullied.
The student participants were also asked: “How many times have you used the Internet, cellphone or other electronic device to spread rumors, bully, tease or threaten someone else?” The responses indicated that fewer kids are cyberbullying in Sudbury but the numbers go up with each grade, with grade 6 at 2 percent and grade 8 at 5 percent. This time more boys are likely to cyberbully than girls, 6 percent versus 5 percent.
What Can Parents Do?
Kids don’t learn manners offline by osmosis and they don’t learn them online either. We teach our kids at a young age to say “please” and “thank you” and encourage them to be courteous and respectful in the real world. But kids don’t automatically connect that they should apply those same courteous behaviors when they go online, and in fact, the rules are a bit different in the online world. We need to teach kids to use manners and be respectful and courteous in the virtual world, too, and we need to provide parental oversight. Go over an Internet Code of Conduct for Safety and Behavior and then make sure your kids are adhering to it by monitoring how they are behaving online.
Some Kids are Doing the Right Thing
Recently an Osseo, Minn., student and captain of the football team, Kevin Curwick, got tired of the online bullying that he was seeing from fellow classmates and did something about it. He started @osseonicethings on Twitter to counter cyberbullying. An example of a recent tweet read, “A shout out the three cross-country girls who stopped their race to help a girl from another team who had asthma attack.” This is the trend we need to go for -- away from “mean girl” nonsense being paraded as cool to courteous, respectful behavior being expected, promoted and rewarded. Show your support for @osseonicethings by following Kevin Curwick on Twitter! This is a great example of how cyberbullying can be eradicated.
