Cyberbullying: a "virtual" camp nightmare?

Camping Magazine, May-June, 2007 by Joel D. Haber, Scott B. Haber

I'll never forget that panicked phone call from a camp director after she received a call from a distraught parent whose daughter had been "outed" online by a group of her "girlfriends" one week before camp. Her daughter was devastated. She thought these girls were her friends, and she didn't want to go to camp any more. The mother was extremely upset, looking for answers and a way to rectify this situation. How would you handle this situation?

In the years since Columbine, our nation seriously started tackling school bullying. Through the American Camp Association, we have been making tremendous strides in the camp bullying field with articles, policy information, and letters to parents providing a dialogue, information, and management about day and resident camp bullying. However, we face a new and disturbing threat with bullying concerns that have catapulted this issue to a whole new level--bullying is now "virtual." The "sticks and stones may break my bones" nursery rhyme has a PG-rating compared to the new and problematic ways in which bullying over the Internet can destroy and humiliate its victims.

How disturbing is cyberbullying for our camp community? Here are a few examples:

* A picture of a counselor dressed scantily taken surreptitiously by another counselor when the counselor was getting dressed is posted online without the counselor's knowledge.

* A picture taken of a counselor drinking at a bar looking sloshed after work is posted on a Web site for parents to see with unflattering remarks said about her.

* A "hit list" of the biggest losers at camp including campers and counselors is posted on a popular socialnetworking site.

* An online rumor started by a group of boys about a bunkmate they claimed to be "gay" following a picture taken of him hugging another camper goodbye at the end of last season.

* Online profiles of campers and counselors which are nasty, disturbing, and meant to harm the victims by exposing their vulnerabilities in upsetting ways.

* Campers relating sexually inappropriate information online about other campers to their friends and counselors as a way to be popular and isolate others on the bottom of the social ladder.

Cyberbullying: What is it?

Cyberbullying involves the use of information and communication technologies such as e-mail, cell phone and pager text messages, instant messaging, personal Web sites or blogs, and online personal polling Web sites. The technology is used to promote deliberate, repeated, and hurtful behavior by an individual or group, with the intent to harm others. This is similar in many ways to our familiar notion of bullying. The key to bullying is that there has to be intent to harm a person with lesser power. The intent of harm can come from a group that can be quite large in the case of the Internet, or from an individual. It is different in its method: Cyberbullies do their bullying through technology.

How has cyberbullying grown so quickly and become such a big issue? Why do we tolerate this behavior online if we don't tolerate this behavior in our actual lives? We tolerate it because we see technology changing so quickly--we don't understand it, don't have the tools to manage it, and most importantly, because access to the Internet is 24/7. It is too easy to do if you want to be hurtful to another person. Cyberbullying can happen when adult supervision is lean--the common problem with bullying in the first place. It is more common than regular bullying because it is "indirect."

The Internet tends to provide people with a false sense of security because there is a level of anonymity--and no direct feedback in the form of social cues or a verbal response from someone outside. Thus, it makes it easy for almost anyone to do things they think they can "get away with." People will say things online that they would never say to another person face-to-face. The distance created by technology makes the act of bullying much easier to perform. Rather than threatening a kid to his face, cyberbullies can simply type the message and hit send without seeing the all too real look on the face of the kid who receives it.

Prevalence of Cyberbullying

According to i-Safe America, in a study of more than 1,500 kids, ages ten to fourteen, 57 percent of kids report that someone has said hurtful or angry things to them online, 42 percent report having been bullied online, and 20 percent have received mean or threatening e-mails. More importantly, 58 percent of these kids had not told their parents or another adult about someone being mean to them.

In the camp area, my own data of 1,200 camp staff surveyed from the summer of 2006 reveals some interesting statistics. A breakdown of 434 males and 788 females yields the following responses to the question:

View Chart 1

This data shows us that cyberbullying among females is almost twice as likely to occur in the most common forms of cyberbullying: e-mail and instant messaging. The data reveal that cyberbullying is widely experienced by our camp staff.