Education — for both parents and students — is the key to combating cyber-bullying and helping bridge the technological gap between today’s youths and adults, speech and cyber-bullying experts said Friday at an Anti-Defamation League event in Palo Alto.
In the wake of several high-profile bullying cases, such as the suicide of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince in Massachusetts following months of harassment, the league’s central Pacific region organized a seminar on the topic for about 50 Northern California educators at the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center.
The one thing parents should do is set up a Facebook page, said Justin Patchin, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center. Parents need to learn how youths communicate on the Web, he said.
“There is a gap, but for engaged and involved parents, technology creates a way to narrow that gap,” Patchin said in a panel discussion Friday afternoon.
Students also need to understand that their actions online have consequences, panelists said.
Recent research, they noted, shows youths aren’t concerned about privacy. Schools should teach students how to safely use websites like Facebook, one audience member suggested.
The anonymity the Internet offers has allowed hate speech and bullying to “flourish” in a way that wasn’t possible before, said Nancy Appel, associate director of the league’s central Pacific region.
“You don’t have to worry about looking in the face of the person to whom you’re speaking,” she said.
Cyber-bullying happens in every country, Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan said, but Facebook’s model encourages people to use their real identity. That accountability helps promote more thoughtful discussion, he said.
“We try really hard to create a place where people will actually be themselves,” Sullivan said. “That’s a scary thing for a lot of people, especially people who have seen the worst of the Internet.
The law doesn’t provide much guidance about cyber-bullying and what schools can do to prevent it, Appel said. Supreme Court cases have found that speech is generally allowed unless it creates a substantial disruption to the school, she said, but issues such as whether the speech takes place off or on campus complicate matters.
“Students can be lewd and profane and vulgar in their speech off campus,” Appel said, and schools likely cannot intervene. “The more violent the speech gets, or the more sexually explicit the speech gets, that’s when the courts will stand behind schools.”
The Anti-Defamation League has developed a model “cyber-bullying prevention law,” which would require school districts to adopt a comprehensive anti-bullying policy, include a clear definition of bullying, and require regular training for teachers and students on how to recognize and respond to bullying and cyber-bullying.
Though changes to the law may happen slowly, Sullivan said he has seen parents begin to develop a more sophisticated understanding of Facebook and social media.
“Adults were paranoid and didn’t understand it a year and a half ago,” Sullivan said. “Now, the question isn’t, ‘Should I allow my child to do it?’ It’s, ‘How do I interact with my child in that context?”
E-mail Diana Samuels at dsamuels@dailynewsgroup.com.
Tips on responding to cyber-bullying
For family members:
• Save the evidence
• Protect your child from further bullying by blocking offending e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers
• Report harmful online speech to the police
• Report incidents and file complaints with e-mail services, Internet service providers, Web sites, cell phone companies.
For students:
• Ignore the bullying; don”t prolong it by engaging with the perpetrator
• Don”t feel shame; tell your parents or a trusted adult and report cyber-bullying incidents to school authorities
• Change phone numbers, e-mail addresses and screen names if necessary
Source: Anti-Defamation League
For more information, visit:
www.adl.org/education/cyber-bullying • www.cyber-bullying.us
