What is Cyberbullying?
- Sending mean, vulgar, or threatening messages or images
- Posting sensitive, private information about another person
- Pretending to be someone else in order to make that person look bad
- Intentionally excluding someone from an online group
How to Help Your Child
- What do I do if my child is experiencing cyberbullying?
- What do I do if my child is bullying other kids online?
Preventing Cyberbullying
Possible Short-Term Effects:
- Anxiety
- Loneliness
- Low self-esteem
- Poor social self-competence
- Depression
- Psychosomatic symptoms
- Social withdrawal
- School refusal
- School absenteeism
- Poor academic performance
- Physical health complaints
- Running away from home
- Alcohol and drug use
- Suicide
Possible Long-Term Effects:
- High rates of depression
- Social anxiety
- Pathological perfectionism
- Greater neuroticism in adulthood
- Childhood bullying is a highly memorable experience and recollections of these events show no evidence of forgetting
Source: What Happens Over Time to Those Who Bully and Those Who are Victimized? Patricia McDougall, PhD, Tracy Vaillancourt, PhD & Shelley Hymel, PhD
- The victim has no place to hide; the bully can target them anytime and anyplace.
- Cyberbullying can involve a very wide audience (e.g. through the circulation of video clips on the internet), although the bully may not be aware of their reactions.
- The bully is relatively protected by the anonymity of electronic forms of contact, which acts as a safeguard against retaliation or sanctions.
- As with some indirect traditional bullying, the cyberbully does not usually see the response of the victim, changing the satisfactions or inhibitions normally generated by this.
- Adolescents who tended to spend more time online tended also to report that they cyberbullied or were themselves cyberbullied more frequently.
Is my child cyberbullied?
Possible warning signs
- Avoids the computer, cell phone, and other technological devices or appears stressed when receiving an e-mail, instant message, or text
- Withdraws from family and friends, or acts reluctant to attend school and social events
- Avoids conversations about computer use
- Exhibits signs of low self-esteem including depression and/or fear
- Grades begin to decline
- Lack of eating or sleeping
Ask Marian
Norton’s Marian Merritt’s blogs about family cyberlife.
Questions and Answers on Bullying
See recent questions and answers on dealing with bullying.
