Cyberbullying by Adolescents: A Preliminary Assessment

* Students, parents, educators, and law enforcement personnel should know where to go for information about online abuses, such as cyber intimidation, con artists, identity thieves, predators, stalkers, criminal hackers, financial fraud, security, and privacy problems. WiredSafety, http://wiredsafety.org, is an organization that provides assistance in this area (Aftab 2005). The U.S. Department of Justice (2005), www.cybercrime.gov, offers guidelines on cyber ethics for students, parents, and teachers and identifies government contacts for reporting Internet crimes. Bill Belsey (2005), recipient of the Canadian Prime Minister's Award for Teaching Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Technology, maintains www.cyberbullying.ca, a Web site for students, parents, and the public that describes the emotional costs of cyberbullying, forms of mistreatment, and prevention strategies.

* Adults should ensure that students realize that people may not be who they say they are in a chat room. For example, someone could claim to be a 14-year-old female, but in actuality be a 50-year-old male predator seeking to take advantage of a vulnerable adolescent.

* Teenagers never should agree to meet someone they have chatted with online unless their parents go with them and the meeting is in a public place.

* People should avoid sending impulse messages or staying online when angry. Wait until self-control and a sense of calm is restored so that the message is more sensibly written and excludes hostility. People typically regret sending a "flame" (angry) message that could motivate someone to become a cyberbully as an act of revenge. Keep in mind that messages written in capital letters are interpreted as shouting by some recipients (Olund 2004).

* When adolescents tell teachers or parents about cyber harassment, the cooperating adults immediately should inform the police and the Internet instant messaging or mobile phone service provider.

* Victims never should respond to cyberbullies, but always should keep messages as evidence, including the text and source of information detailing the originating address of the e-mail. Whether or not they are read, messages should not be erased. The police, Internet service provider, or the telephone company often can use the narratives for tracking purposes. Those who are persecuted might notice words used by certain people they know. Most cyberbullies who post anonymous messages are not as anonymous as they may think. If a legitimate threat exists, law enforcement officials can subpoena records of all Web users for a particular Web site. From there, users can be tracked to their individual computers (Schneier 2003).

The mission of Channel One, a broadcast network viewed daily in 400,000 American classrooms, is to keep secondary school students informed of current events and teach them how the media works. Channel One's Web site presents an interactive quiz that adolescents, parents, and teachers can complete to check their knowledge about coping with bullies in cyberspace. The quiz includes questions on instant messaging, threatening e-mails, revealing photographs, personal information, screen name selection, cell phone flames, chat room conflicts, blocking options, and group persecution. Immediate feedback is provided for every response, along with an explanation of the correct answers and a final score. Channel One's Web site, www. channelone.com/newsl2004/01/30/cyberbullieslindex.html, provides complete information on this interactive quiz (Olund 2004).