Educators

Educators & Counselors: What you should know

Click below for warning signs and consequences of cyberbullying:

How common is cyber bullying?

Although little research has been conducted on cyber bullying, recent studies have found that:

18% of students in grades 6-8 said they had been cyberbullied at least once in the last couple of months; and 6% said it had happened to them 2 or more times (Kowalski et al., 2005).
11% of students in grades 6-8 said they had cyberbullied another person at least once in the last couple of months, and 2% said they had done it two or more times (Kowalski et al., 2005).
19% of regular Internet users between the ages of 10 and 17 reported being involved in online aggression; 15% had been aggressors, and 7% had been targets (3% were both aggressors and targets) (Ybarra & Mitchell, 2004).
17% of 6-11 year-olds and 36% of 12-17-year-olds reported that someone said threatening or embarrassing things about them through e-mail, instant messages, web sites, chat rooms, or text messages (Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, 2006).
Cyber bullying has increased in recent years. In nationally representative surveys of 10-17 year-olds, twice as many children and youth indicated that they had been victims and perpetrators of online harassment in 2005 compared with 1999/2000 (Wolak, Mitchell, & Finkelhor, 2006).

Suggestions for educators:

Educate your students, teachers, and other staff members about cyber bullying, its dangers, and what to do if someone is cyberbullied.
Be sure that your school’s anti-bullying rules and policies address cyber bullying.
Closely monitor students’ use of computers at school.
Use filtering and tracking software on all computers, but don’t rely solely on this software to screen out cyber bullying and other problematic on-line behavior.
Investigate reports of cyber bullying immediately. If cyber bullying occurs through the school district’s Internet system, you are obligated to take action.
If the cyber bullying occurs off-campus, consider what actions you might take to help address the bullying:

Notify parents of victims and parents of cyberbullies of known or suspected cyber bullying.
Notify the police if the known or suspected cyber bullying involves a threat.
Closely monitor the behavior of the affected students at school for possible bullying.
Talk with all students about the harms caused by cyber bullying.
Remember — cyber bullying that occurs off-campus can travel like wildfire among your students and can affect how they behave and relate to each other at school.
Investigate to see if the victim(s) of cyber bullying could use some support from a school counselor or school-based mental health professional.