What is Cyberbullying?

Any harassment, threatening, or bullying that uses the Internet or any other electronic device including, but not limited to email, text messaging, instant messaging, chat rooms, blogs, social networking sites, and profiles, is considered to be cyberbullying.

Most commonly, forms of Cyberbullying include:

Personal Intimidation or Attacks
Posting personally abusive and threatening comments via blogs, social networks, profiles or websites

Exclusion
Denying access or membership to an online peer group, community or activities; Deleting someone from friendship lists, and/or using ‘ignore functions’; Excluding one from one’s own accounts.

Impersonation
Setting up fake websites, blogs, or email accounts that appear to have been done by the victim and using these accounts to send out or post material; May also involve manipulating and publishing pictures and comments.

Sharing or Posting
Making public images or videos of victims being abused or humiliated offline.

Stealing Passwords
To take over an email account, social network site, or blog and change the content or send out harmful material attributing it to the victim.Making False Reports
Contacting a service provider like MySpace, or Yahoo Instant Messenger and stating that the victim violated their terms of service in an attempt to get the intended victim’s services denied.

The methods used are limited only by a child’s imagination and access to technology. The cyberbully one moment may become the victim the next. Be aware that kids often change roles, going from victim to bully and back again.

Children have killed each other and committed suicide after being involved in a cyberbullying incident.

In addition to the hurt and pain caused by being bullied, victims of Cyberbullying have to cope with knowing that the images or postings have been seen, and possibly saved, by many people. Knowing that they cannot destroy the material that has been posted and not knowing who has seen the material, the victims are left with no sense of closure or resolution.

Cyberbullying is usually not a one time communication, unless it involves a death threat or a credible threat of serious bodily harm. Kids usually know it when they see it, while less informed grown-ups may be more worried about the lewd language used by the kids than the hurtful effect of rude and embarrassing posts.

From Professional Learning Board’s online continuing education course for teachers: Internet Safety Protecting Children in an Online World