NetFamilyNews.orgCyberbullying is a serious problem that, according to research, is the most common online risk for young people, affecting about a quarter of US 13-to-17-year-olds. Schools and courts are struggling to figure out how to deal with student behavior that occurs off school grounds but can have such a disruptive, sometimes destructive, effect on school.
All the discussion about the legal and First Amendment issues seems to be missing a key factor that points to how to handle cyberbullying: the media environment with which all these incidents are directly associated. The Internet, especially to youth, is now a) collegial or social/behavioral in nature and b) mirrors “real world” life and conditions – it’s not something in addition to student or school life. Bullying online is not a whole new problem for schools and courts to deal with. It’s a reflection of student relationships, and the bullying’s context is largely the life of the school community, not the Internet (or cellphones or any other devices).
Cyberbullying prevention/intervention take a village too
“Because a bully’s success depends heavily on context” – write Yale psychology professor Alan Yazdin and his co-author Carlo Rotella at Boston College in “Bullies: They can be stopped, but it takes a village” at Slate.com – “attempts to prevent bullying should concentrate primarily on changing the context rather than directly addressing the victim’s or the bully’s behavior.” That, they add, involves “the entire school, including administration, teachers, and peers.”
Author and educator Rosalind Wiseman agrees. In a 55-min. podcast interview she gave fellow educator and author Annie Fox, Wiseman recently said that dealing with cyberbullying “really speaks to a school’s culture of dignity….
“Don’t do a 45-minute assembly on cyberbullying,” Wiseman said. “It’s a waste of time. Have a faculty meeting, and then have a parent meeting, and tell the students this is what you’re doing – not just a bullying assembly. Tell them ‘we understand that this is about the whole culture of the school, and as part of that culture, you have to participate in this as well.’” Slightly tongue in cheek, Wiseman adds that this will increase “the chance of students believing you’re not completely full of it.”
Quick fixes don’t exist
Schools will probably get plenty of eye-rolling and “whatever’s” from the more socially aggressive students, but gradually things can turn around – particularly if there’s disciplinary backup. [Note the word "backup": discipline is not the goal, but rather restoration of order – more on this below.] For example, when talking with a student suspected of having been the bully in an incident, the end of the conversation could go something like:
“I know we’re on the same page, here: You’re a person of honor, so I’m taking you on your word that this won’t happen again. But you need to be clear that, if you walk out of here and, as a result of this meeting, the life of the target in any way becomes more difficult, then we are in a whole different situation – a whole different level of the problem. You need to be clear that, if that happens, you’re taking a very big chance.”
That conversation could also include the following. “I hope and expect that you’ll be talking with your parents about this, because I’m going to be calling them within 24 hours.” Wiseman tells teachers and administrators that of course the kids will talk to their parents, offering their own spin on the situation. “So it’s very important to say to the parent, ‘I wanted to include you from the beginning, that is why I talked with your child. I fully expected [him or her] to speak to you immediately and now I’m following up so we can work together and have this be a learning opportunity – a teachable moment – for your child.”
Turning incidents into ‘teachable moments’
Those words are crucial: “learning opportunity,” “teachable moment.” They are stepping stones on the way to building the school’s “culture of dignity,” as Wiseman put. Because it’s merely logical that a one-time, sage-on-the-stage assembly will accomplish very little. It’s also logical that involving all players and skill sets – students, parents, teachers, administrators, and counselors – creates the conditions for changing the school’s culture (see this). The school is, in fact, creating a new social norm – as Elizabeth Englander, director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center and an adviser to state legislators working on bullying-education legislation, told Emily Bazelon at Slate.com – where the whole school community looks down on dissing, flaming, mean gossiping, and other social cruelty, hopefully including students’ parents. The Slate piece links to some great resources for school strategizing. For example, here’s a sexting investigation protocol from the Center for Safe & Responsible Internet Use offering the spectrum of sexting causes and intentions enabling school staff to ask students intelligent questions.
When an interdisciplinary group of us were working on that protocol, authored by Nancy Willard, it occurred to me that, because it lays out the spectrum of sexting’s causes, it’ll help school officials see why it’s essential that schools not just reflexively hand off investigations to law enforcement (whose involvement some state laws require).
The goal of any incident investigation
“The immediate goal of the investigation is not discipline [and certainly not expediency] but rather support for the targeted student(s) [who may be experiencing psychological harm], and restoration of order. The ultimate goal is to create a learning opportunity for all involved. The learning opportunity should be on-the-spot, as well as school and community-wide, and focus on the areas of critical thinking, mindful decision-making, perspective-taking, and citizenship.” That’s a statement a couple of us worked up because we feel it’s so important for everybody to understand that, in the social-media age, we can only change behavior – in schools and online communities – together, as “a village.”
Here’s Part 1 of this 2-part series: “Clicks & cliques: Really meaty advice for parents on cyberbullying.”
Related links
- In another Massachusetts incident, last week Boston-area police charged three students with identity theft reportedly for creating a fake Facebook profile and posting mean comments about a peer. In an editorial last Saturday (2/13), the Boston Globe applauded the police “for taking aggressive action against cyberbullying when so many others have failed to do so.” There’s the sad reality: that too often the “authority figure” taking over is the police. Law enforcement is only one piece of the multidisciplinary team that should be in place in schools and ready to step in when something comes up. The other essential roles are principal and counselor/psychologist.
- “Cyberbullying better defined” – with links to two national studies showing that about one-third of teens
- Finding of the Harvard Berkman Center’s 2008 Internet Safety & Technical Task Force: “Bullying and harassment, most often by peers, are the most frequent threats that minors face, both online and offline” (p. 4 of Executive Summary)
- The Fox-Wiseman podcast
- ConnectSafely.org’s Tips to Help Stop Cyberbullying
3 Comments
Thanks very much for these two excellent posts Ann: some really sensitive advice. I've written about them on the eModeration blog here http://blog.emoderation.com/2010/02/when-your-teenager-says-theyre-being.html
Next time I read a weblog, I hope that this doesnt disappoint me approximately this one. I mean, I know it was my choice to see, but I actually believed youd have something interesting to mention. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something you could fix if you werent too busy looking for attention.
Thank you for commenting. I’m sorry my intention to pull together some ideas for solutions in this post didn’t work for you. I’d be interested in your thoughts on what would fix cyberbullying, if you have time.
21 Trackbacks/Pingbacks
[...] school” and social-norming approach to bullying and cyberbullying. Absolutely (see this and this). But why do online/offline risk prevention only around the academic part of school? [...]
[...] risk prevention practitioners are saying that the solution has to be a whole-school approach (see “Clicks, cliques & cyberbullying: Whole-school response is key”). Some good things that have come out of the New Jersey story: 1) kids and parents talking about [...]
[...] leery of school cyberbullying actions" and "Parenting & the digital drama overload," and "Clicks, cliques & cyberbullying."] // Share| Permalink Post a comment — Trackback URI RSS 2.0 feed for these comments [...]
[...] in contrast, surfaced as a problem children felt they could help combat.” [See also "Clicks, Cliques & cyberbullying: Whole school response is key."] // Share| Permalink Post a comment — Trackback URI RSS 2.0 feed for these comments [...]
[...] Risk spectrum matches real life. Because the Internet mirrors and serves as a platform for virtually all of human life, it mirrors the full spectrum of offline risks, not just the few featured in popular TV shows or covered in news reports focused on the most extreme outcomes. Consider cyberbullying, the risk identified by the 2009 Berkman Center report as the one that affects the most kids; cyberbullying isn’t a single identifiable behavior, and its range of causes requires a multidisciplinary, whole-school-community approach (see this). [...]
[...] with cyberbullying, the most common online risk, requires a whole-school-community approach (see this), and 3) the partnership is symbolic of what we said in the OSTWG report last week, that [...]
[...] of a school culture of respect, or dignity, as author/educator Rosalind Wiseman puts it (see this blog post for more on that). What might be learned? Critical thinking about what is posted, uploaded, and [...]
[...] “Why anti-bullying laws don’t work: School psychologist’s view,” “Click, cliques & cyberbullying: Whole school response is key,” “Formspring: What’s going on around it,” and “Citizenship & the [...]
[...] “Clicks, cliques & cyberbullying, Part 2: Whole-school response is key” [...]
[...] A subhead to this post might be “The flaws of laws” – but also the flawed term “cyberbullying” itself. Every kid is very individual, so every case of bullying or cyberbullying is very individual. It’s therefore difficult and probably very unwise to make generalizations about the cases, the children involved, or bullying in general. And increasingly I’m hearing from risk-prevention experts, even as more and more states pass anti-bullying laws, that there is no one-size-fits-all solution or law that can effectively deal with all cases (except schools creating their own cultures of respect, but that’s another story – see this one). [...]
[...] my ConnectSafely co-director’s article on this in the Huffington Post. [See also "Clicks, cliques & cyberbullying: Whole school response is needed" and "Students on bullying: Important study."] // Share| Permalink Post a comment — [...]
[...] A two part article from NetFamilyNews.org – Kid-Tech News for Parents: Clicks & cliques: *Really* meaty advice for parents on cyberbullying: http://www.netfamilynews.org/2010/02/clicks-cliques-really-meaty-advice-for.html Clicks, cliques & cyberbullying, Part 2: Whole-school response is key: http://www.netfamilynews.org/?p=28742 [...]
[...] culture of respect that defeats bullying and other social problems at school (for more on this, see “Clicks, cliques & cyberbullying: Whole school response is key” and “The freedom to not fit in”). // Share| Permalink Post a comment — [...]
[...] schools will address all bullying in a way that helps, not just punitively. As I wrote a year ago here, the immediate goal of a school bullying investigation is not discipline (certainly not expediency) [...]
[...] diagnosis that doesn’t assess the whole patient…School officials need to treat each case with a whole school response, a holistic mindset. The psychosocial makeup, context, and risk taking behaviors are not to be [...]
[...] “Clicks, cliques & cyberbullying, Part 2: Whole-school response is key” Permalink Post a comment — Trackback URI RSS 2.0 feed for these comments This entry [...]
[...] Clicks, cliques and cyberbullying: Whole school response is the key (NetFamilyNews) [...]
[...] Clicks, cliques and cyberbullying: Whole school response is the key (NetFamilyNews) This entry was posted in Child Injury. Bookmark the permalink. [...]
[...] Clicks, cliques and cyberbullying: Whole school response is the key (NetFamilyNews) [...]
[...] Clicks, cliques and cyberbullying: Whole school response is the key (NetFamilyNews) [...]
[...] Community: fosters social norms and a sense of belonging, which are both protective. A community’s participants organically (in the process of participating) develop the social norms that enable productive interaction and collaboration, providing a sense of safety to members and protecting the learning process and community cohesiveness. When there’s a lack of community, such as on YouTube or huge news sites that are too vast and diverse to be communities, it’s much more common to see the cruel or moronic comments that are too often associated with social media (even though, in these sites, too, there are people who see themselves as stakeholders, YouTube has told its online-safety advisers, and communities develop around vertical interests and channels). A sense of belonging mitigates hurtful behavior. My friend and adviser Patricia Agatston, a risk prevention specialist for Atlanta-area schools, wrote me, “Bullying prevention that helps all students feel like they belong and are accepted really fits into” the work of psychologist Alfred Adler, one of whose central principles is that “all humans strive to belong,” Patti wrote. “When we feel like we belong and are accepted, behavior is usually productive. When we doubt our belonging and acceptance we may act in less helpful ways,” she added. This is also why so many psychologists and bullying-prevention experts talk about the need for a whole-school-community approach. [...]
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