It is a scary thing to think your
child is being bullied without your knowledge but unfortunatly it could be
happening. So parents, instead of trying to think it couldn't be happening to your child step up and ask your children what are they really doing behind their screens, and stop cyber bullying.
According to Wikipedia the
definition of cyber bullying is the use of information and communication
technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior by an
individual or group that is intended to harm others. Cyber bullying is not something we should
take lightly according to netsmartz.org about one third of teens get bullied
online and girls are a lot more likely to be bullied than guys.
In high school I knew a peer that
was cyber bullied for months and she never told anyone until she thought her
life was at stake. There was a boy that
was Facebook messaging her every day saying how ugly she was and would never
amount to anything because she was too poor to afford college. Also this bully threaten that if she were to
ever tell anyone that he was bullying her he would personally come to school
and beat her up. She kept it secret for
months and all of her friends could tell something was going on and it took one
friend to really care about her to find out the truth. Apparently this "dude" that was
bullying her ended up to be a girl at our school who was jealous because this
girl had "stole" her boyfriend.
When things started to leak out about the bullying the bully made one
last threat that if she was to show up to school she would be beaten so badly
that her boyfriend would never want to talk to her again. Of course the school stepped in the bully was
expelled from school and dealt with in the proper way. However for the peer that had been bullied it
took her awhile to really adjust to the fact no one was after her anymore, her
friends said that it took her a solid month to really get back to normal.
This is why cyber bulling is so
important because just because the bullying has stop does not mean the person
being bullied has recovered. As parents
we need to make sure that we truly know what is going on behind that
screen. My peer's parents could have
prevented this if they would have just checked up on her and made sure
everything was okay. This website is a cute website for parents to get to, to
help inform their children about cyber bulling. Parents can be one of the major impacts on stopping cyber bulling because they can step and make sure that their child is doing what they are suppose to be doing on the internet. Too many time parents just let their child go on the internet and never once check up on them to see what they are really doing.
