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Cyberbullying

What you need to know about the realities of cyberbullying, and how to help your kids stay safe

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Originally published in Today's Parent October 2008

After school, 13-year-old Alicia dumps her backpack and heads to the computer to connect with her friends on MSN. One of them breaks the news that she’s been sent a link to a website entitled “Top 10 People Not to Take to Prom,” on which Alicia’s school photo is featured, alongside comments like “What a fat ugly sl*t.” Turns out the rest of Alicia’s friends — and who knows how many other schoolmates — were sent the same link. Crying and fighting the urge to throw up, Alicia tells her mother. Though Mom offers a comforting hug, her advice is less helpful: “Just don’t look at it, hon.” The next day, when Alicia’s mother drives her to school, she can’t understand why the normally easygoing teen refuses to get out of the car.

Details of this story were changed to protect the real Alicia’s identity, but its essence is, sadly, too true. And just like Alicia’s fictional mom, many parents are surprised at how utterly real cyberspace is for kids. In fact, kids generally don’t distinguish between the digital world and the physical one, says Shaheen Shariff, a McGill University education professor and author of Cyber-bullying: Issues for the School, the Classroom and the Home. Because their academic, recreational and social lives have become so intertwined with technology, cyberspace is where kids’ relationships are built or broken.

It’s also where a new breed of schoolyard tyrant can follow your child home and hound his every step, via cellphone or laptop. Imagine your son being awakened by a beeping cellphone at 4 a.m. to find the anonymous text message “im watching u,” or discovering that someone took a photo of him undressing for gym and posted it on the Web for the world to see. Such scenarios are disturbingly real: According to a 2008 University of Toronto survey, 20 percent of students in grades six and seven have been cyberbullied.

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