Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Cyber Bullying Floodgates

Another call came in today from a distraught parent worried about her teen child being bullied online. This is a case of a teenage girl going after another teenage girl in horrible fashion on MySpace. According to the mother, the abuse has escalated from taunts and disparaging remarks to death threats. The concerned parent said she went to the police, and the police told her they could do nothing about it.

This highlights the fact that we need, sooner than later, to upload an itemized to do checklist for parents when they face such a situation. Although it is not our core business, we are also trying to figure out how we can respond rapidly ourselves to such situations, because it has become abundantly clear that there is a real need out there for swift and effective responses to cyber bullying, and that old school methods are not as effective as they need to be. It is clear that police have something else added to their already significant responsibilities, and it is incumbent upon us as a society to empower them and help them in any way we can to handle this growing phenomenon. Achieving true internet safety will require partnerships across the online-offline divide.

So stayed tuned here for more on our checklist for how to handle such cyber bullying episodes.

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