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I was recently talking to a colleague (who is an economist at my University) and he told me of an experience that recently happened with his daughter.  She was at a get-together at a hotel in our city where alcohol was being served. Somehow the police found out about the party and busted all of the under-aged drinkers.  My friend’s 18-year-old daughter had very little to drink, so the cops just sent her home with a warning.  Others in the group weren’t as lucky.  The students who were busted later learned that the cops found out about the party because one particular person who was on her way to the party was pulled over by the police and she had told them that she was on her way to a party at that particular hotel.  It goes without saying that those who got busted were not happy about this.  In response, my friend’s daughter “anonymously” created a Facebook page making fun of this girl and calling her out for being a “rat,” among other disparaging remarks. This is an example of cyberbullying.

This anecdote is consistent with our research which demonstrates that many cyberbullies engage in online aggression because they feel they have been affronted (either online or off).  They also don’t think they will get caught or fully think through the consequences of their actions.  Well, the Facebook page was easily traced back to my friend’s daughter and, of course, he had a good talk with his daughter.  My friend doesn’t consider his daughter to be a bully; nor does his daughter view herself as a bully.  Nevertheless, even good kids make mistakes, and, unfortunately with the age of technology, small lapses in judgment can result in serious problems.  Do yourself a favor if you have teen-aged kids who are online: talk to them about these issues NOW so you don’t have to do it after an incident occurs.  Good luck.

CNN posted an interesting story about teachers setting up MySpace pages and “friending” their students…and about a Missouri legislator sponsoring a bill banning elementary school teachers from doing so.  I was talking to Justin about this, and we both agree that a state bill banning this activity is completely overboard (another example of how politicians feed into the existing moral panic about these sites).  We also both agree that school districts should have their own policies about whether teachers and students can interact through social networking sites.  My personal opinion is that the vast majority of teachers and students would use the tool for beneficial and productive purposes, but that there is a slippery slope effect that would take place.  It is way too easy to move from talking about school assignments to asking more “personal” (though innocent) questions to sharing private worldviews and engaging in candid self-disclosure with another person online.  Anonymity and geographical distance while online, coupled with feelings of loneliness and the desire to connect with someone (anyone) when individuals interact through computer-mediated communication, make inappropriate messages between teachers and students a very real possibility.  I feel pretty strongly about this based on communications research done in the evolution of romantic relationships on the Internet.  Yes, I am aware of age and maturity differences between teachers and students.  Yes, I am aware that some might think I’m being a bit overprotective and old-school.  I just believe that the standard way of communication between elementary and secondary school teachers and students is perfectly fine and may not need enhancing.  Students need to learn to talk with competence and eloquence in-person with adults, rather than having the crutch of typing things out all the time.  This comes with opportunity and practice.  With post-secondary instructors and students – the potential for problems still exist, but I am much more fine with using social networking sites to connect with each other for the purposes of education and learning.  This topic is super fascinating and I would love to hear more thoughts.  Clearly I could go on, but I will leave it for now at that.

When we first started exploring the issue of cyberbullying over 6 years ago, there weren’t very many of us out there. A very small handful of researchers were studying the problem and virtually nothing had been published in the academic literature. Now, thankfully, cyberbullying is being comprehensively studied by a number of competent research teams. Nevertheless, information from this important work is still slow to make it to the public who so desperately need it. It takes a long time (years in many cases) for a study to yield meaningful results, and even longer for those results to get into the hands of those who can make a difference. That is one of the reasons we started this Web site: to try to bridge the gap between research and practice.

We conducted our first preliminary study on cyberbullying in 2003 and those results didn’t make it into a journal until the spring of 2006. Even so, how many teachers and parents actually read journal articles? Not many, I’m afraid. So we launched cyberbullying.us as a platform from which we could disseminate our important work to those who can benefit most from it.

We continue to empirically study cyberbullying and other technological challenges facing adolescents and the adults who supervise them, but we have made a conscious decision to do a better job of getting that information out to the masses. That is why we spent over a year writing “Bullying beyond the Schoolyard” – because it is more likely that a teacher or parent will stumble across our book in the library than a journal article. We also have been presenting findings from our research in local presentations and workshops around the country for the last couple of years. As academics, it could be easy to simply sit in our offices and study and write about a social problem. While we think it is crucial to contribute to the academic knowledge base concerning cyberbullying, we also want to make sure those who need that knowledge can access it.

The next couple of years should provide valuable insights into the problem of cyberbullying. As I mentioned above, we are aware of several major research projects that are ongoing, in addition to the work that we continue to do. If you are interested in studying this problem and have questions about how to get started, feel free to drop us a line. We’re all in this together…

For those of you interested in purchasing our book, it is now on sale at Amazon.com for $21.41 which is 33% off the list price of $31.95.  This is such a good price you should maybe think about buying two copies!  We’re not sure how long the sale will last, but the book is still on track to be out by next Tuesday.