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In Part I of this post I talked about what has changed–and 6 Things adults need to know about Cyberbullying. In this post I am going to talk about how to handle cyberbullying with kids you know.
1) Teach Your Children What Cyberbullying Is: First go over my original post and then talk about the lingo. Many times kids get involved in cyberbullying incidents and have no idea it goes on with other students and that it is wrong.
Impersonation: Pretending to me someone else online by sending messages, posting material, or contacting other people under another person’s name or image.
Flaming: Online fights using electronic messages such as IM’s, emails, chat comments or posts. They usually include angry and inappropriate language.
Reporting: Sharing someone’s embarassing images, secrets or private information online.
Cyber Harassment: Repeatedly sending or receiving nasty, mean and insulting messages.
Denigration: Insulting someone online by spreading gossip, rumors or posting pictures to damage their feelings, relationships or reputation.
Tricking: Tricking someone into revealing secrets or private info in a undisclosed public forum and/or revealing it other places online.
Exclusionary: Purposefully leaving people out of an online group or forum
Stalking: Repeated following or messaging.
2) Protect Your Child’s Online Reputation by setting up an RSS to their name or reporting threats to the websites they belong to. I will be releasing an ebook in the coming weeks about how to set-up a online reputation defender online.
A child should never be threatened online, they need to be aware of the threats that are flung from friends as well as strangers and they should report anything that makes them feel uncomfortable!
3) Watch Over Their Shoulder Here are some parental control softwares I like and often recommend to the families I mentor. You might want to seriously consider installing these on your home computers. I have picked a good selection below ranging from very invasive to light monitoring.
SpectorSoft This one has lots of different plans to choose from and for all different kinds of computers. I like it because if you are not computer savvy then you can call them anytime. I put this on one of my clients computers and it worked well.
PC Tattletale This one is the most comprehensive one I have ever seen. It really covers everything your child could be doing everything from blocking keywords, to email monitoring, to MySpace monitoring to keystroke records, time usage…
Safe Eyes For PCs and Macs, this has been featured in a lot of media campaigns on Internet Safety.
KidsNet Featured on ABC, this software is very simple and easy to use. They also have some bonus material about how to teach your kids about online safety as well as watching them.
4) Make Sure They Are Not A CyberBully
Bullies: People who actually do the harassing and demean or harm others.
Targets or Victims: Those who receive the insults
Enablers: Those who encourage and support the bullies who are harassing other
Harmful Bystanders: Those who know that bullying is going on, but do nothing about it.
Helpful Bystanders: Those who know bullying is going on and report it.
5) Watch for Signs of Victimization:
I think parents should always watch for changes in their children that might have to do with online relationships.
-depression, anger, sadness that is out of the ordinary
-change of behavior after internet usage
-sudden sharp increase or decrease of internet usage
-avoidance of friends, school, activities or hobbies
-decline in grades
6) Tell Them How to Stop CyberBullies:
Save the evidence, do not retaliate, file a complaint on the website, contact and adult. You can also contact the school or the bully’s parent if you know who it is. In more serious cases you can contact a lawyer or the police and file a report.
9 responses so far ↓
1 Vicki // Apr 22, 2008 at 4:26 am
I’m interested in how to RSS a specific name as opposed to a site–to read what’s being written about a person, not set up an RSS folder where feeds are dropped into. I clicked your link and read about RSSing but I didn’t get any info about how to RSS a name. Can you give more info on that?
Thanks!
2 Vanessa // Apr 22, 2008 at 6:47 am
To RSS to a person’s name you must create an RSS folder/feed system otherwise there will be no where for the subscription to be delivered to. If you do not want to RSS you can create a Google Alert (type this into google) for the name. This is not as thorough but it is pretty good.
hope this helps
Vanessa
3 KenS // Apr 22, 2008 at 7:19 am
Hey Vanessa,
I’ve watched and read a few of your blogs. I commend you on being a net generation voice in this issue. In your list of recommended software, would you mind if I add a title? We make PC Pandora… just released version 5.0 and you may find that it is just as comprehensive as Tattletale and better priced than Spector. Not to mention my involvement in trying to be an advocate (in my blog, in the news, on websites, etc.) for online safety and trying to get parents to wake-up and realize it’s a whole new world and their kids are accessing it through the computer. This isn’t your parents’ parenting, this is the 21st century… etc etc… [rant blocked]. Anyway, keep up the good posts. See you around…
-ken
4 Vanessa // Apr 22, 2008 at 7:26 am
Hi Ken
Yes, thank you for always commenting, please do add this to the list. I will put it on my recommendations page, because I think you are a great advocate of the positive message behind the product. Thank you for the support!
Vanessa
5 Amy Strecker // Apr 22, 2008 at 7:58 am
Great coverage on cyberbullying! I hope parents will reach out and use these tools. It’s a great idea for everyone to at least have a Google Alert set up for their name, so they’ll know what’s out there in connection to their name.
6 Luke Gilkerson // Apr 22, 2008 at 9:01 am
Thanks so much for your helpful posts. You’ve got great advice for parents and teens.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about one of my recent posts about cyberbullying: http://www.covenanteyes.com/blog/2008/04/07/cyberbullying-the-new-playground/
7 Tim // Apr 22, 2008 at 1:27 pm
There might be another (free) website which parents might find useful: http://www.spokeo.com.
Spokeo monitors the (public) content of 22 social networking (myspace, bebo, etc.) and media sites (YouTube, flikr, etc)
If you know your child’s email address(es), you can just drop it (them) into spokeo, and spokeo will tell you: 1) what social networking sites that email belongs to, 2) what photos and songs they’ve uploaded to flikr, imeem, etc., and even 3) what their Amazon.com “wish list” is!
This allows parents another way of “looking over the child’s shoulder”–even if the child has access to a friend’s (unmonitored) computer.
Frankly, spokeo is a pretty scary concept–try it out on your own email address(es) and see what pops up! But the level of information it provides seems perfect for the concerned parent.
Hope this is a helpful lead.
8 Vanessa // Apr 23, 2008 at 8:22 am
Thank you for all of these comments, I am going to check out Spokeo and Lukes article, thanks for reading!
vanessa
9 Ron // Apr 25, 2008 at 8:10 am
Excellent post! Cyberbullying is a big problem that parents need to address.
Thanks for mentioning Safe Eyes here. A feature that might be of interest…parents can configure Safe Eyes to record IM conversations, so parents can see exactly what’s going on with a bullying incident.
I just signed up for your ebook list. I’m looking forward to reading that.
(By the way, coupon code “BLOGGER” will save 10% if you or any of your readers would like to try it out.)
Ron
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