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
- Bullying Prevention: At School and Online
- What To Do When Your Child is the Victim of Cyberbullying
- Cyberbullying & Bullying-Related Suicides: 1 Way to Help Our Digital-Age Kids
- Gay & Lesbian Youth Likely Victims of Cyberbullying
- What To Do When Your Child is the Victim of Cyberbullying
- The Internet at Home: Making it Work for You and Your Kids
- Cyberbullying: An Old Problem With a New Face
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.
Additional Content
showing 1 - 5 of 53
-
1.
What are the signs that my child may be bullying others online?
No parent wants to learn that their child is involved in bullying other children, but some children find bullying to be...
Source: Education.com -
2.
Gay & Lesbian Youth Likely Victims of Cyberbullying
Gay & Lesbian youth are more likely to be regular victims of cyberbullying says a new study from Iowa State...
Source: Connect Safely -
3.
Keeping Youth Cyber-Safe
We all know that bullying is a problem in schools. But now that many students have their own computers and cell phones...
Source: Committee for Children -
4.
Tips to Help Stop Cyberbullying
Here are some tips if you or someone you know is being bullied - and advice for ending (or preventing) the cycle of...
Source: Connect Safely -
5.
Cyberbullying and Litigation: Know the Steps to Filing a Case Against Your Child's Bully
Cyberbullying involves mean or threatening messages or images sent across the internet or some other form of technology...
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
Questions and Answers on Bullying
See recent questions and answers on dealing with bullying.
