• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

NetFamilyNews.org

Kid tech intel for everybody

Show Search
Hide Search
  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research
  • About NetFamilyNews.org
    • Supporters
    • Anne Collier’s Bio
    • Copyright
    • Privacy

What defeats cyberbullying: Viral kindness

October 19, 2012 By Anne 4 Comments

This is how it’s done in social media. Viral kindness. If social cruelty can get piled on in social media, so can compassion. Just watch “We Are All Daniel Cui,” which shows how more than 100 students at Hillsborough High School in northern California defeated cyberbullying by swamping it with support for soccer goalie Daniel Cui, after somebody in his school created a “Worst Goalie Ever” page. The varsity team was having a losing season and Daniel, a freshman, had missed a save that apparently would’ve led to the only win of the season. So one big-hearted upperclassman on the team took the lead on turning the whole situation around. Not named in the film but helping to narrate it, the student, Jeff Grimes, said in the video, “We decided we had to do something.” He and some other teammates found a photo of a great save Daniel had made and made it their Facebook profile photo. That’s what went viral.

The video, by Facebook’s filmmaker Peter Jordan, tells the rest of the story much better than I can, so do check it out. But I love the conclusion that became the title. It models the acceptance that happens through acknowledging that we all have stories with the same elements as Daniel’s. Everybody messes up at times and nobody needs mess-ups turned into public humiliation. Not everybody has support like Jeff’s, which is what needs to go viral. But I think this video also shows how that can change. With examples like this, shared widely through spreadable media (a term coined by Prof. Henry Jenkins) and paired with the power of social norms development (now slowly flowing into humanity’s new frontier called social media), more and more of us will have – and maybe even be – supporters like Jeff.

A bit of background

Launched this past August, Facebook Stories is where, put very simply, the service presents “extraordinary stories about people using Facebook,” where more than a billion people in every country on the planet are sharing with each other their thoughts, interests, and experiences, often as they happen or multiple times a day. Facebook tells me they’ll be posting a new video story every month representing a theme. August’s was “Remembering,” about a man in New Delhi who lost his memory and got it back again with the help of friends he reached out to through the site. Users can submit their own stories, too, in any medium they choose – text, photo, video – or with mixed-media. Facebook will be working in all media as well. Here’s coverage from ABC News.

Oh, and Daniel is now in 11th grade and still playing soccer, reportedly even more accomplished than the amazing save in the video indicates. Jeff’s now a sophomore in college.

Coming up, Part 2: Other powerful fixes for meanness and cruelty in social media

Related links

  • Facebook this week launched its Bullying Prevention Page, featuring the Daniel Cui video. Below it is some great background on Social Reporting in a video called “Resolving Conflicts”
  • About the Born This Way Foundation, which launched this year with the premise of fostering “a kinder, braver world”
  • “Young change agents leveraging social media”
Share Button

Filed Under: cyberbullying, Risk & Safety Tagged With: cyberbullying, Daniel Cui, Facebook Stories, Jeff Grimes, Social Media

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. Facebook & Social Emotional Learning — Inversoft says:
    May 28, 2013 at 2:54 pm

    […] learning here, here (on how it improves academic performance as well as social skills), and here (on viral […]

    Reply
  2. Unity Charter School Blog » Technology In Education-Links of the Moment says:
    March 18, 2013 at 8:47 pm

    […] we’re all too aware of cyber bullying.  This short post prescribes a remedy, viral kindness.  Well worth the read.  On another front, Facebook has introduced a Prevent Bulling page.  Read […]

    Reply
  3. What is bullying & what can be done about it: Lit review | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    October 30, 2012 at 3:15 pm

    […] About how viral kindness defeats viral bullying in social media […]

    Reply
  4. Technology In Education - Links of the Moment says:
    October 26, 2012 at 8:43 pm

    […] […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

NFN in your in-box:

Anne Collier


Bio and my...
2016 TEDx Talk on
the heart of digital citizenship

Subscribe to my
RSS feed
Follow me on Twitter or even better:
NEW: Follow me on MASTODON!
Friend me on Facebook
See me on YouTube

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

Categories

Recent Posts

  • Why I struggle mightily with the new Utah law
  • A solution for ‘awful but lawful’
  • New global service for getting nudes off the Internet
  • Then there’s the flip side of ChatGPT
  • For SID 2023: What youth want ‘online safety’ to teach
  • ChatGPT for media literacy training
  • Future safety: Content moderators and digital grassroots justice
  • Mental health 2023, Part 1: Youth on algorithms

Footer

Welcome to NetFamilyNews!

Founded as a nonprofit public service in 1999, NetFamilyNews quickly became the “community newspaper” of a vital interest community of subscribers in more than 50 countries. Site and newsletter became a blog in the early 2000s. Nowadays, you can subscribe in the box to the right to receive articles in your in-box as they're posted – or look for tweets, posts on our Facebook page, and key commentaries from Anne on her page at Medium.com. She welcomes your comments, follows and shares!

Categories

  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research

ABOUT

  • About NFN
  • Supporters
  • Anne Collier’s Bio
  • Copyright
  • Privacy

Search

Subscribe



THANKS TO NETFAMILYNEWS.ORG's SUPPORTER HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM.
Copyright © 2023 ANNE COLLIER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.