Lauren Ellis

CI 467
Tech Standard 4 Paper

Technology Paper, Stanadard Four; Cyberbullying

Although technology and the rapid advancement of technology have improved

our quality of life, along with it brings consequences. Consequences may vary from

people losing their jobs to technology, to children being bullied in their own home

because of the new technology. A new and scary form of bullying now a day is

cyberbullying. Cyberbullying wasn’t prevalent when I was younger, but students now

have their own cell phones and some are even fortunate enough to have a computer in

their own room. Children are using these new and easy to use technology forms to bully

fellow pupils via text message, email and online with resources like blogs and Facebook.

There are always pros and cons in a situation, but I feel that the cons outweigh the pros

very much in this case. By the end of this paper I would like to fully explain the spectrum

of cyberbullying and come up with a few ways to prevent it from happening, if not

stopping cyberbullying all together.

First of all, defining bullying would be the best place to start. According to the

article, “Cyberbullying: its nature and impact in secondary school pupils”, they state that

“‘Bullying’ is usually defined as being an aggressive, intentional act or behavior that is

carried out by a group or an individual repeatedly and over time against a victim who can

not easily defend him or herself”. Bullying has been around since the beginning of time,

there is no way to avoid it, just prevent it and implement severe consequences when

bullying does occur. Bullying can be verbal or physical, but now it has moved into the

cyber world. Bullying has been occurring in text messages, phone calls, emails, blogs,
and on popular websites like Facebook and MySpace. With this new form of bullying, it

makes it harder for teachers and parents to monitor and easier for the bully.

Cyberbullying has become so popular and well-known because of the number of

teens who can access the internet, according to Amanda Lenhart (Cyberbullying; What

the research is telling us) approximately 93% of teens go on line and 89% can access the

internet from home. This gives children an easy way to get online and implement

cyberbullying. As stated above, cyberbullying can occur through blogs, text messages

and Facebook. Some of the major cons include children being able to “bully” from home,

they don’t have to have actual interaction with their victim. This makes bullying a lot

easier and can take bullying to a higher degree. Although bullies may appear tough, when

they are talking through their computers it is a lot easier to say mean things and make fun

of people. When children can access the Internet easily, a lot of time the parent doesn’t

have time to monitor what a child is doing on the Internet. Therefore if the parents can’t

monitor all of the activity, how will they prevent bullying from occurring? Here is a

statistic from the Seattle School Districts website about cyberbullying,

“41.5 percent of respondents who were cyber bullied did not tell anyone of their

victimization. Only 11.3 percent told their mother or father, and only 3 percent told a

teacher or other adult.” Also, if no student is telling their parent or teacher about the

incidents, how is there every going to be a solution?

Another con to cyberbullying and the rapid advancement of technology is one

student can post something on a website that is offensive to one of their pupils and it

becomes that much easier for other students to jump in. It becomes a game and of course

funny to everyone except the victim. When posting something on Facebook, I know that
it is easy to reply to a post, even if the conversation has nothing to do with you. With

these websites, I think it has not only made bullying easier, but also I think that it has

increased the number of children who are verbally abused by their peers. According to a

Seattle Public Schools curriculum that deals specifically with cyberbullying, it states that

one in three children in the U.S. is a target of online bullying. This website also states that

“17 percent of six- to 11 year-olds and 36 percent of 12-o 17-year-olds reported that

someone said threatening or embarrassing things about them through e-mail, instant

messages, web sites, chat rooms, or text messaging”.

The last con I want to discuss is that this form of bullying can still occur at school.

With physical bullying, at least there is sometimes proof or an adult can witness an

incident and the bully can be punished accordingly. With cyberbullying, the bully can

post mean words, or send a text message while a teacher is teaching a lesson plan. With

technology now, everything is instant and a mean statement about a person can be posted

within seconds and viewed by other students in mere minutes. In the Journal of Child

Psychology and Psychiatry, they did an article on cyberbullying and went around to about

twenty different schools to see how this was affecting their students. One student quotes,

‘everyone would get these messages because everyone has a phone’. Therefore, again

making bullying that much easier.

With cyberbullying there aren’t much pros to this subject, the only pros I can see

are the applications with technology that children are using in a negative way, could be

turn around and used for positive. For one thing, the blogs they may be using to victimize

other students could be used for a good cause. Numerous classrooms are now

incorporating blogs to use in their lesson plans. In a class I was recently in, we had to find
hot topics of the week, post them in our blog and discuss them. This makes it easier for

maybe the shyer student to get their opinion out. With blogs, some people use these as an

outlet to express themselves and their emotions. This is good for a child who has a hard

time talking about those things, and is a good outlet.

Another pro to the rapid advancement in technology is what technology can do in

the classroom now. With items such as smart boards and laptops for every child,

education can be changed greatly in a positive way. Imagine if every child had access to a

computer and Internet at home. This would enable children to use word documents and

type up papers at a younger age, it would give them an opportunity to explore technology

and realize how amazing it can be, when used in the proper way. It would give them

access to educational websites and interactive learning websites. There are endless

possibilities with education and technology working together. The hard part about that

though is utilizing these methods in the correct way.

Wither cyberbullying being such a fresh subject in the education realm, not many

solutions have been found to work correctly. One solution is to have teachers and parents

monitor very closely. Although some children will feel as if their parent is hovering too

much, it doesn’t matter because in the long run the parent is really helping. With teachers

and parents monitoring closer, they can ban students from certain sites, setup software on

the computer to become aware of the websites students are visiting and this may prevent

some cyberbullying.

Although monitoring every action a child does on a computer is a bit of far reach,

one idea that may stop them in their tracks are the kids of consequences that are in place

when found a student is found to being a bully online. If students are fully aware of the
consequences from their actions, they may never take the first step to initiate bullying. It

is also imperative to let students know that even if they aren’t’ the bully, bring a

bystander is just as bad. Let students know that it is okay to let a teacher know when

bullying is occurring online and in the classroom. According to a lesson plan by Seattle

School District, they believe that if a bystander doesn’t report an incident, it makes the

student feel inferior and in fear, just as if THEY were the victim.

My perspective on this subject is that technology can be great but at the same time

very destructive. Technology brings to the table great innovations in the education sector

and can made life easier for just about everyone in this world. But with cyberbullying, the

effects can be damaging and may even lead to death. Cyberbullying I believe say become

so popular and spread so quickly because of the easy access children have to technology.

They can get on the Internet form their phones now, and it seems like nothing is

impossible to them. The only way to stop this is to monitor closely. Maybe setting up

mirrors in the back of the classroom to monitor what students are really doing on their

computers is the first step and then starting to ban websites, whatever it takes to let

students know that bullying online isn’t okay. Schools now need to come up with rules

and regulations on this subject because I fear it will only get worse with the advancement

in technology.
 Bibliography

Lenhart, Amanda. "Cyberbullying: What The Research Is Telling Us."

Pew/Internet. SlideShare, 2009. Web. Nov. 2009.
<http://www.slideshare.net/PewInternet/cyberbullying-what-the-research-is-telling-us?
type=presentation>.

Middle School Cyberbullying Curriculum. Seattle Public Schools, 2009. Web.

Nov. 2009. <http://www.seattleschools.org/area/prevention/cbms.html>.

Smith, Peter K., and Jess Mahdavi. "Cyberbullying: its nature and impact in
secondary school pupils." The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 49.4 (2008):
376-85. Cyberbullying Research Center. 2009. Web. Nov. 2009.
<http://www.cyberbullying.us/research.php>.