As thousands of students look forward to the launch of their next school year: new school supplies, putting together that new outfit or new uniform shirt, or just getting together with friends to start another school roller coaster. There are many others, however, who watch the start of school with awe.

They are the new kids, the shy kids, the kids who would rather be anywhere but at school. Why? The reasons take on a myriad of variations, many based on simple “coming of age” angst or “end of summer” depression, but within this group there are some children who are alone in a classroom. These are the children who, out of embarrassment, embarrassment, or fear, have been or fear being harmed by their peers, or worse yet, by themselves because they believe they are alone and “the problem” is too big for them or anyone else to handle. .

At first glance, you may be thinking that I’m talking about “neighborhood” gang crime. It’s nothing so obvious. In fact, this crime takes place under the roofs in what appear to be happy families. This crime is insidious, cowardly and criminal. There’s a wave of that in schools across the country. It’s called “Cyber ​​Bullying”.

Cyber ​​bullying takes what used to be name-calling, shoving, and shoving in the schoolyard to a whole new, expansive, and very dangerous level. The cyber bully uses email, chat rooms, instant messaging, cell phones, and text messages to insult, demean, threaten, humiliate, harass, mislead, impersonate, and, in many cases, post lewd or embarrassing photographs online of his peers, while hiding behind a veil of anonymity provided by the Internet.

At the high school level, typical insults include comments like “You’re ugly, you’re fat, you’re a liar, no one likes you.” promiscuity. Photos, which are sometimes doctored, and videos from cell phones are posted in emails and on familiar file-sharing sites, such as Myspace.com, Xanga.com, LiveJournal.com, Blogger.com and others.

Even bad childhood decisions, like when a student creates a website dedicated to posting pictures of the fattest or ugliest kids in school, or when a seventh-grade girl in Manhattan posted a video a boy sent her of him singing to her. a serenade her because he liked her and she didn’t like him. It just seemed like a joke to her, that is, until she ended up being the laughingstock of the entire Network. Needless to say, this young man was devastated.

Unlike the schoolyard bully, these attacks aren’t from a scary kid who wants to push his weight around. They can be from anyone or no one the child knows. Tragically, sometimes it’s from someone the child thought was a friend. And unlike the schoolyard bully, a cyber bully can be understood by one or several children and by the time the post hits the net, literally thousands, if not millions, of people have seen it, if it has been shared on all the world. And unlike the schoolyard bully, the cyber bully hits their victim in the sanctity of their own home or bedroom, where they feel they can’t escape.

Suzanne Stanford, executive director of My Internet Safety Coach (http://www.myinternetsafetycoach.com), says, “Children are often afraid to tell their parents for fear that their computer will be taken away or their parents will make the situation worse.” What they don’t realize is that unless the bullying is stopped immediately, it can escalate and leave permanent psychological scars.

That’s one of the reasons Ms. Stanford recommends Children’s Educational Network’s FREE internet filter and parental control software and TUKI Browser for Kids, available at http://www.TUKI.com.

Children need to know how to navigate safely within this environment, so they know how to prevent and protect themselves from these situations. In addition, we make it very clear to children who want to participate in this type of activity that their behavior has serious personal consequences.

For example, we want them to consider “before” making bad decisions that anything posted online is there forever, and no matter how much they later regret doing this to someone, the damage has already been done and is irreversible.” Experts in the field say that victims of these crimes suffer from psychological trauma requiring professional help, have had to move to other schools, their mental state has resulted in their grades dropping to such a degree that they cannot qualify for college after graduating from high school; many are afraid of forming close relationships with new people and, in more serious cases, it has resulted in suicide or murder.

These are not just childish jokes. These are serious crimes, and several states are enacting laws, such as Florida, that make these emails serious crimes. In Pennsylvania, cyberbullying, harassment, and stalking carry severe jail terms and fines for those convicted.

Cyber ​​bullies need to realize that they can hide behind screen names from their victims, but they cannot hide from law enforcement. Mark Franek, Dean of Students at William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia, explained the process very well: “Every time the Internet is accessed, an IP (Internet Protocol) address is established. The 12 numbers punctuated by the 3 dots is the electronic address fingerprint that can be accessed by authorities to track all electronic communications between computers and/or mobile phones. No computer or mobile phone, or its user, is truly anonymous in cyberspace.”

According to a June 2000 survey by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children of 1,500 children ages 10 to 17, 1 in 17 youth had been threatened or harassed via the Internet, and approximately one-third of them considered the incidents they were extremely distressing. . A 2004 study in Britain by NCH, a British children’s charity, found that 1 in 4 students had been bullied online.

According to a CBS 2 (television) special report, done in 2005, more than 50% of students in grades 4-8 have been bullied online. A recent national survey of kids and tweens by i-Safe America found that 57% of kids in grades 4-8 said someone had said hurtful or angry things to them online, 13% “fairly often”; 53% admitted to saying mean or hurtful things to others, 7% “fairly often”; 35% had been threatened online, 5% “fairly often”; 42% had been bullied online, 5% “fairly often”; and 58% had not told their parents or another adult that they had received cruel or hurtful comments. In the UK, 33% of 9-19 year olds who use phones with email, chat, instant messaging and/or texting at least once a week “received mean or hurtful messages, and only 4% of parents say their child has been bullied online, according to very recent research from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The Internet and cell phones have become, in large part, the fabric of social life for tweens and teens. As such, they are prime targets for this type of attack. The first thing kids need to understand about instant messaging and blogs (web logs) or live diaries is that the more personal information you give someone, the more it can be used against you not just by those you want to read. but for others who are not. Every time you write something online and press “send”, you have just given up your privacy. Also, people online will pose as someone they are not for purposes of deception and, in many cases, to commit crimes, often stealing someone’s identity in the process.

Some helpful tips for kids and teens about cyberbullying:

o Know that there are ALWAYS people available to help you who will make cyberbullies stop. These people are law enforcement; your school teacher, school counselor, principal; your parents or a responsible and caring adult; Cybercrime reporting sites such as: http://www.cybertipline.org, http://www.wiredsafety.net, http://www.KidSafe.com, and [email protected].

o Do not provide any personal information, such as your name, the name of your school or the name of any of the sports teams you play for, your home or cell phone number, your address, including the city where your other parent lives if they are divorced, the address of their parents’ office or the address of their school.

o Never use your real name as your username or screen name.

If you discover that you are a victim of cyberbullying:

o Don’t respond to bullies directly because that’s exactly what they want. Don’t give them the pleasure of knowing you’re upset about it. Stay calm.

o Save and print all messages – DO NOT DELETE EMAILS.

o Report this crime to the police. If possible, report it while it’s happening.

o Take notes: List the name of the harassers, if known, and full details about the incident(s)

o If you are afraid to call the police, email an incident report to cybercrime reporting sites such as: http://www.cybertipline.org, http://www.wiredsafety.org, or safety@ worldkids.net.

REMEMBER: YOU ARE IN CONTROL OF YOUR ONLINE EXPERIENCE. IT IS UNACCEPTABLE THAT YOU WILL BE VERBALLY ABUSED OR THREATENED

If you want to BLOCK USERS from contacting you by email, do the following:

o Look for the “Block” button. Sometimes it’s in your inbox.

o Block someone by highlighting or checking the box next to their email and then clicking the Block button. When you do this, all emails from the address you blocked will not reach your inbox.
In Outlook Express, go to a “Blocked Senders List”. To do this, do the following:
Click on:

or “Tools”

o “Message Rules”

o “Blocked Senders List”

or Click “Add”

o Type the person’s email address in the box, or right-click the person’s name in your contact list.

o Click “Email Messages” to block only emails; “News Posts”, if you want to block communication from a newsgroup or someone in a newsgroup; o “Email and News” to block people’s personal email and newsgroup communication.

If you still receive messages from someone who is harassing you online, after doing the above, change your email address.

It is a disturbing thought for any parent to think that their child may or may not be the victim of a Cyber ​​Bully. Difficult as it is to consider, both parents and teachers need to talk about this topic at home and in the classroom. We need to raise awareness of this issue and be proactive. Legislators are currently drafting laws to prevent and prosecute perpetrators of these crimes. Education, vigilance, and strict laws are key to disarming bullies.