cyberbullying

How should you punish a cyberbully?

Are there guidelines to follow? Are there gradations of discipline that, say, 13-year-olds should fear?

I ask because of the story of Justine Willliams. Williams, an eighth-grader from North Andover, Mass., survived cancer when she was 10. She survived, but she lost a leg.

A couple of months ago, according to CBS Boston, for reasons she couldn't understand, Willliams began receiving texts that threatened, among other things, that her house would be bombed and her animals would be killed. Threats of rape also reportedly featured in some of the texts.

After an investigation, … Read more

Facebook has long permitted members to put on their profiles whether they're single, married, or "it's complicated," but today it added two new options to the mix: "in a civil union" and "in a domestic partnership."

The news was originally reported in a Huffington Post article, which said that the change was made at the recommendation of Facebook's Network of Support, a coalition that the social network created with gay and lesbian advocacy groups to encourage tolerance and combat harassment. At the time, the tragic stories of several gay teenagers who … Read more

Facebook announced Wednesday that it has partnered with teen idol Justin Bieber--yes, that Justin Bieber--and MTV's "The Thin Line" public awareness campaign to combat cyberbullying and other forms of digital abuse on the Web. Contributors to MTV's map of anti-abuse tactics from around the country will now be eligible to win prizes that include a "personalized voice-mail greeting from Justin Bieber."

Facebook's broader role in this does not appear to be particularly large. But attaching its name to this sort of initiative is important: Among Facebook's younger users, cyberbullying and other forms … Read more

We don't call it "pencil bullying" when someone uses a wooden stick with lead inside to write someone a threatening note. When a person shakes her fist in front of someone's face, we don't call it "fist bullying." And when kids don't let other kids sit at their lunch table, we don't call it "table bullying."

Yet when someone uses a cell phone or the Web to harass, demean, defame, or annoy another person, we give it the special name "cyberbullying."

I was reminded of this when … Read more

A new resource from MTV is encouraging youth to "post an action" online that they have taken to combat digital abuse such as cyberbullying and sexting.

The resource, called Draw Your Line, is part of MTV's "A Thin Line" campaign, which was launched in February when the network aired a documentary about sexting.

An action can be something personal such as deleting inappropriate messages or images, blocking a user from sending hurtful or harassing messages, getting help or changing passwords. Or it can be social, such as arranging a school assembly or speaking up on … Read more

commentary The recent suicide of Tyler Clementi, which raised the visibility of cyberbullying and digital ethics, is serving as a call to action to end something much deeper than that: cruelty, homophobia, and a distorted sense of entitlement to disclose information about others.

Clementi, an 18-year-old freshman at Rutgers University, jumped off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate, Dharum Ravi, and Rutgers student Molly Wei (both also 18) allegedly used a Webcam to record and live-stream Clementi kissing another male in his dorm room.

What these two students did was wrong for a number of reasons--and it would have … Read more

I have barely come to terms with the idea that someone at a school thought it appropriate, wise, or even sane to spy on kids via Webcams on school-issued laptops. Has technology really taken over human thought processes quite so much?

So I temporarily lost the ability to spell my own name when I was confronted with the rather heartening news that a school principal has asked parents to get their kids away from Facebook and any other social-networking site.

I don't know whether the emission of a show called "Jersey Shore" has enlivened school principals to … Read more

Recent stories in the press about teenage cyberbullying and real-world bullying are sickening. It's hard to know how much cyberbullying contributed to her decision to kill herself, but the case of Phoebe Prince brings tears to my eyes. The South Hadley, Mass., 15-year-old was reportedly the brunt of repeated cruelty at the hands of classmates (six of whom are now facing criminal charges) until she put an end to her life.

There is also the recent cyberbullying case of Alexis Pilkington, a 17-year-old girl from Long Island, N.Y., who committed suicide last month after being taunted with cruel … Read more

As fellow CNET blogger Elizabeth Armstrong Moore reported, a recent survey by researchers at Iowa State University found that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth are more likely to experience cyberbullying than their heterosexual counterparts.

The survey found that 54 percent of LGBT youth reported having been cyberbullied within the past 30 days.

Study coauthor Warren Blumenfeld, an associate professor at Iowa State, pointed out during an interview that much of the bullying is taking place in chat rooms but also on social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Many of the young people interviewed want to see these sites … Read more