Stop Cyberbullying

Many of my students write term research papers on Social Media, which brings up the topic of cyberbullying. It is defined as, ”the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature” (Dictionary.com).

While I am not surprised at the high rate of 87% of today’s youth who have seen cyberbullying occur. However, I was shocked by from Pew Research Study from 2018 to learn that 59% of teens have actually been affected by cyberbullying directly:

But what does concern me, even more, is how do we do stop cyberbullying from happening in the first place. After doing some research here are 10 Ways to help combat Cyberbullying:

1. Educate yourself.
2. Use secure passwords.
3. Think before posting.
4. Be careful of what photos you share.
5. Set up privacy controls.
6. Logout of public computers.
7. Raise Awareness.
8. Don’t be a cyber bully yourself.
9. Never open emails from people who you don’t know.
10. Google yourself and remove anything that could be used against you.

I pray that our government, society, schools, and educators continue to work together to make the internet a safe place to learn for our children.