Know the Facts
What is Bullying?
Bullying can take many forms, such as physical or verbal bullying, and through more indirect acts, such as gossiping or excluding an individual. No matter what situation or form it comes in, bullying can make your teen feel depressed, hurt and alone. It can keep them from enjoying the activities and places that are part of their life.
What is Cyberspace?
Cyberspace is like a big city made up of libraries, museums, places to have fun, and plenty of opportunities to meet wonderful people from all walks of life. But, like any community, there are also some people and areas that you need to avoid and others that require caution and good common sense. You can get into Cyberspace by computers, cellular telephones, PDA's, and video games. Millions of teens go online every day, and most of their online behaviors are safe. But, the way to stay safe is to understand the dangers and follow some simple rules to help your teen stay out of trouble.
What is Cyberbullying?
Cyber bullying is when an individual is tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted by another person using the Internet, interactive and digital technologies or mobile phones.
Reality Check:
- While 2:3 of teens are likely to be harassed or bullied off-line, nearly 1:3 have been harassed as a result of technology (Lenhart, 2007).
- 160,000 students skip school EACH DAY due to fear of being bullied (SADD, 2008).
- 64% of all teens say they do things online they don’t want their parents to know about (Lenhart, Madden and Rainie, 2006).
- 71% of teens receive messages online from strangers, 45% of teens have been asked for personal information online and 30% of teens contemplate meeting a person they met online (Teenage Research Unlimited, 2006).
- 42% of youths (age 10-17) have seen internet porn in the past year. Two-thirds of these exposures were unwanted (DeNoon, 2007).