Understanding & Preventing Cyberbullying

Cyberbulling is a difficult topic to find a solution for. To be realistic, it seems there will always be some sort of bullying dynamic taking place with adolescents / young adults, it just depends on what level of harm the cyber bullying is causing. 

Although teachers and parents want to get involved in students social media as much as possible, sometimes it can backfire with the bully creating more problems.

For example, your mom watches your social media account and sees that you received a nasty message from someone. She then calls the school to essentially tell on that student for cyber bullying. This specific bully can then twist the situation to pick on the victim even more by calling them weak, claiming they ran to their mom, saying they’re a tattle-tale, and so on.

Having teachers and parents constantly defending the victim shows a sign of weakness. Behavioral patterns are also extremely difficult to change, and sometimes punishing the bully may only fuel their fire. I believe that teachers and parents have to be involved in students social media because it is so dangerous to leave unsupervised. However, it is their approach when a situation takes place that matters the most. I feel that silence is the biggest killer, therefore as a parent or teacher, I would advise the student being cyber bullied to simply shut down their social media for at least a few days and avoid all face-to-face contact with the bully. I would still give the bully some sort of warning so that he / she does not move onto a different victim.