Canadian study: Cyberbullying seen as 'cool'

A recent survey found that 40% of Canadian 9-to-17-year-olds say they've been cyberbullied (43% female, 38% male), nearly 60% said there were no consequences, and "some 60% of the respondents agree people bully because it’s 'cool'," reports the Vancouver Sun, citing the survey from Microsoft Canada and market research firm Youthography. The London (Ont.) Free Press reports that Canadian "parents are more involved than ever with their children's online activities," with 84% of respondents saying they've talked with their parents about Internet dangers. Here's the study's press release. In other findings:

9-to-12-year-old Canadians are online just under two hours a day, on average, compared to three hours a day for teens 13-to-17-year-olds

Girls primarily go online to socialize, with "68% saying that is what they value the Internet for" and the same percentage of boys saying they value the ability to play games.

"Teens are more likely than tweens to use the Internet to escape problems, deal with stress and avoid family problems.

30% have lied about their age on a social networking site, and 15% have pretended to be someone they are not.

15% have had their passwords stolen.

76% are very careful about the personal information they divulge online.

How kids become bully victims: Very early signs

A new study in the Archives of General Psychiatry offers clues to how children become targets of bullying, Newsweek reports. The first key finding was that bully victims in grade school are more likely to have been aggressive (e.g., "smashing a toy when someone takes their ball away") very early in life, as young as 17 months, in fact. "That may sound counterintuitive, but it's not surprising to experts in the field, who have known for some time that there's a link between being aggressive and being tormented." When an angry child acts out his or her frustrations, peers know there are buttons to push. Another predictor: when these very small children take their anger out on other children. Two other risk factors Newsweek mentions are "harsh or reactive parenting" and "lower income families." Here's the study.

Online harassment: Not telling parents

Wow, I've never seen a number this high in relation to online harassment. Psychologists at UCLA report that 72% of 12-to-17-year-olds they surveyed were "bullied online at least once during a recent 12-month period," "only one in 10 reported such cyber-bullying to parents or other adults," and 85% "also experienced bullying in school." The harassment most frequently took the forms of "name-calling or insults" and "most typically took place through instant messaging." A bit more on frequency of incidents: The study found that 41% of teens surveyed reported 1-3 "bullying incidents" during those 12 months, 13% 4-6 incidents, and 19% seven or more. About two-thirds of the harassment victims knew their harassers and half knew them from school. The authors reinforced this finding with the point that "the Internet is not functioning as a separate environment but is connected with the social lives of kids in school."

Let's look at the part about not telling parents: The most common reason cited by the teens surveyed was interesting: They said they "believe they 'need to learn to deal with it.'" Next (31%) was the one I would've expected to top the list: parents might restrict their Net access. "This concern was especially common among girls between the ages of 12 and 14, with 46% fearing restrictions, compared with 27% of boys in the same age group," the authors said. No. 3 among younger teens was the fear of "getting in trouble." Here's a good heads-up from lead researcher Jaana Juvonen: "Many parents do not understand how vital the Internet is to their social lives. Parents can take detrimental action with good intentions, such as trying to protect their children by not letting them use the Internet at all. That is not likely to help parent-teen relationships or the social lives of their children."

In its coverage, CNET asks the intelligent question: "It's important to teach children the importance of not becoming bullies themselves, is it not?" The answer, from an analysis by the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, is yes: "Youth who engage in online aggressive behavior by making rude or nasty comments or frequently embarrassing others are more than twice as likely to report online interpersonal victimization," CACRC researchers wrote in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. The UCLA study appears in the latest issue of the Journal of School Health. [See also "'Cyberbullying' better defined."]

Online harassment or bullying?

Does online harassment become cyberbullying when it's repeated aggressive behavior? Is it bullying only if it's related to a child's experience at school? Are insults posted in social-network profiles harassment while posting of compromising photos of a peer constitutes bullying? These are tough questions still being debated. What does seem to be emerging is the sense that "bullying" is more severe (causing more emotional distress and potentially involving physical threats) than "harassment." Ultimately, the definition may be as much about the victim as the perpetrator - how capable he or she is of shrugging off the mean behavior. Justin Patchin, co-author of the new book Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard, emailed me about my post on defining cyberbullying last week. He posted a thoughtful response in his own blog at Cyberbullying.us, suggesting that online harassment may by default included the repetition factor just because mean posts and images can be re-posted and shared on the Web and mobile devices. About linking online bullying to offline life, "we agree that those incidents that have proven most hurtful typically involve a personal relationship (the target knows the offender in real life)," Professor Patchin writes. "That doesn’t mean, however, that we should simply disregard those behaviors that are carried out among “strangers” online. They too can result in harm." Absolutely! I also think technology can be used not only to express an existing power imbalance between harasser and victim but also to help *create* the power imbalance a would-be bully wants to set up. While we're on the subject, check out this Las Vegas Sun editorial about how some Nevada schools are intelligently working with student activists to address online harassment in the context of violence and intimidation and to teach conflict resolution. The Sun's editors commend Students Against Violence Everywhere (SAVE), a national organization that has nearly two dozen chapters in Nevada (here's more on SAVE).

P2P healing in cyberbullying case

We hear so much in the news about teen meanness and harassment toward each other online that it's quite amazing to find a national story about kindness. In the case of Olivia Gardner, the kindness came from two sisters in a nearby town, Sarah and Emily Buder in Mill Valley, Calif., who read in the newspaper about how Olivia was being bullied and wanted to help, they say in their MySpace video. The in-school bullying of Olivia started, unbelievably, after she had an epileptic seizure. "Then someone started an 'Olivia Haters Club' on the Internet with pornographic emails," MSNBC reports. Her mother couldn't help - she told MSNBC that no words of comfort helped. It was thousands of letters, starting with messages of support from Sarah and Emily, that started Olivia on the road back from near-daily suicidal thoughts to healing. The letters came from all over the countries, not only with messages of love and support but also stories of how the writers too had been bullied. The result of all this is a new book from HarperCollins, Letters to a Bullied Girl: Messages of Healing and Hope, by Olivia Gardner, Emily Buder, and Sarah Buder. [For experts' advice on the online kind of bullying, see the books Cyber Bullying: Bullying in the Digital Age, by Patricia Agatston, Susan Limber, and Robin Kowalski, Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats, by Nancy Willard, and a book coming out this month: Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying, by Profs. Sameer Hinduja and Justin Patchin.]

How teens use social network sites: Clear insights

For some of the clearest, most significant insights yet into how young people use digital media, consider watching footage from "From MySpace to Hip Hop: New Media In the Everyday Lives of Youth," a forum recently held at Stanford University. Hundreds of hours of observation and interviews with young people around the US by more than 20 researchers are represented in the presentations. They're on the second video in the group, introduced by Mimi Ito, one of the principal investigators of the Digital Youth project. Their work is funded by the MacArthur Foundation. Try to watch all the way through to Ito's meaty summary at the end of the second video.

Of particular interest to parents concerned about teen social networkers' safety are findings by C.J. Pascoe mentioned by Dr. Ito, for example that: "Contrary to common fears, flirting and dating are almost always initiated offline in the traditional settings where teens get together and extended online. Her work clearly shows there's a strong social norm among teens that the online space isn't a place to find new romantic partners, but a place to deepen and explore existing offline relationships." Exceptions: marginalized teens "whose romantic partners are restricted for cultural or religious reasons" and gay and lesbian teens (the latter are "not reaching out online for random social encounters but using the expanded possibilities online selectively to overcome limitations they're facing" in their offline social networks); and the very small percentage of teens most at risk of sexual exploitation (see "Profile of a teen online victim"). You'll probably appreciate too, as I did: Heather Horst's findings on teen use of social sites and digital meeting within the context of the family; Ito's comments on the two forms of teen social networking, friendship-driven and interest-driven; danah boyd's insights into the friendship-driven side and Dilan Mahendran's fascinating examples of interest-driven, collaborative digital media making. They all indicate that there is a growing intelligence among teen social media producers about audience: "What they make is inextricably linked to who they make it for and with. They're making media for niche networked publics, not the undifferentiated public of mass media."

1 in 5 Oz youth cyberbullied

Twenty-two percent of Australian youth have been harassed or bullied online, according to Australia's annually Youth Poll. Even so, "the internet plays a critical role in the lives of 15-to-20-year-olds, with 64% having a social network site, The Age cites the survey as finding. The 22% cyberbullying figure compares to about 33% in the US (for more US data, see "Cyberbullying: Clarity needed"). Not unlike in the US, probably, "body image was a major concern to 54 percent of the [Australian] youths surveyed, 46 percent of whom knew someone who had committed suicide or tried to do so."

Why schools, parents need to fight cyberbullying together

Maybe it's obvious, but for anyone who's not sure the line between school grounds and what happens at home should be crossed, here's the view of a UK researcher who has been following the rise of cyberbullying closely:

"We know from research that bullying puts the emotional wellbeing and educational achievement of pupils at risk and has a significant and lasting negative impact upon children’s lives. In addition, it impacts on truancy, exclusions, participation in further or higher education and the incidence of self-harm and suicide," writes Dr. Denise Carter at the University of Hull in TeachingExpertise.com.

Why a home-school joint effort? Because this problem is not about technology or even behavior and discipline alone. One of Dr. Carter's findings in a survey she conducted was young people's "lack of life experience to deal with these issues on an emotional, psychological and social level." Young people gain life experience wherever they are - at home, at school, and everywhere in between - and adults in these learning environments know that there is no cookie-cutter way all children develop their street smarts or life literacy.

We know, too, that removing risk is not the solution to cyberbullying. It's teaching youth to "anticipate, recognize, and deal with risks as and when they arise," Carter writes. She also refers to their need to develop emotional resilience, as in helping them internalize that "this is not the end of the world," "I won't let this get to me," "I don't need to react," "there is more to me and my life than these people and what they're doing." These very basic concepts I'm tossing out as suggestions are mine, not Dr. Carter's - she may not agree - but they do illustrate her point that because life literacy is the solution, both problem and solution obliterate any boundary between home and school and deeply affect academic learning and success.

I'd add one more essential element: teaching citizenship, or social behavior. Our consumers or students of anti-cyberbullying education are not just potential victims or potential bullies (one can turn into the other in a matter of seconds on the Net); they're participants. In effect, they're stakeholders in their own well-being and education as well as their peers'; aggressive behavior hurts them as well as others because it can come right back at them and then create a downward spiral within the peer group and beyond (see also this article in the Archive of Pediatrics). So the cyberbullying curriculum necessarily includes life literacy and citizenship. For a lighter but thoughtful take on cybercitizenship ed, see Vanessa Van Petten's "13 holy cybercitizen laws." [Thanks to California tech educator Anne Bubnic for pointing Dr. Carter's article out.]

Related links

"Another Teen Beating Videotape, This One in Indiana"

"Police think Indiana teen beating inspired by Lakeland [Fla.] case"

Tennessee fight video: "Two Southwind Middle School girls were suspended Monday after their locker room fight was posted on the Internet," reports the Commercial Appeal in the Memphis area.

"Video Beating Stokes Debate Over Fame, Violence" in TechNewsWorld.com.

Cyberbullying: Clarity needed

One of the most surprising things about this bullying story in the New York Times is that the boy is still at the same school in Fayetteville, Ark., after several years of victimization - and now, in the days of full-fledged online schools providing high school degrees. Distance learning is definitely an option for kids, in addition to switching brick-and-mortar schools, but maybe it's not an option for Billy Wolfe, and I'm editorializing.

What's really important to know is how unusual this tragic story is. There are many, many shades of bullying and cyberbullying, we're learning from solid research, and it's important to understand this so that we in no way discount less extreme experiences of bullying young people have.

"Bullying can happen once a week or once a month; it can be an isolated event or something that happens for years; it can be online, offline, or both. It is a varied behavior and it can be upsetting and have psychological impacts across the board; or not. You do not need to be beat up every day and taunted in every environment to be affected," wrote Dr. Michele Ybarra of Internet Solutions for Kids in a recent email to a few of us online-safety advocates.

Here are some brand-new findings from her latest "Growing Up with Media" study of 11-to-16-year-olds....

"School is overwhelmingly the most common environment that kids 11-16 years of age are bullied in," with almost a third of kids saying they've been bullied there. Eleven percent have been bullied online and 10% "in the community (e.g., on the way to and from school)." Six percent have been bullied by cellphone.

Only very small percentages of young people have been bullied monthly or more often - the most, 5%, at school, and 2% have been bullied that often online. Because being bullied monthly or more often is so uncommon, wrote Dr. Ybarra, "you can see how this particular subset of youth is particularly concerning from a health and development perspective."

In other findings, it's heartening to see that almost two-thirds of 11-to-16-year-olds - 63% - "are not bullied anywhere; 17% report being bullied in one environment, 9% in two environments, 5% in three, 2% in four, and a very concerning 3% report being bullied in all five environments assessed" (school, Internet, cellphone, community, and "other").

Michele also sent an important caveat for everyone concerned about cyberbullying: the need to be very clear on what we're talking about: "The term ‘cyberbullying’ (in my opinion) has been mis- and over-used to describe any sort of unwanted or untoward action that occurs online. The definition of bullying is something that happens repeatedly and over time, and is inclusive of an imbalance of power (this is a common definition in the psychology literature). Some of the things that we have heard about that have happened online fit this definition. Others are more akin to ‘harassment’ or ‘defamation’ or other things."