How to Stop a Bully Article in Daily Beast

There is a three part series in the Daily Beast today on Bullying by Lucinda Franks. An interesting read. The topic is really rising to the fore of consciousness of our country. Many states Florida, Rhode Island, Virginia, etc. are taking the issue very seriously and have passed legislation. The mothers of bullied children have grouped together and are becoming a powerful lobby similar to how they did so with MADD, mothers against drunk driving.

Also interesting is some of the backlash against these measures and proposed statutes- the level of insensitivity by some community members is disheartening.

How to Stop a Bully

Parents Concerned About Cyberbullying

There were some very interesting numbers embedded in the recent article below on Care.com. It discussed how many parents are very concerned about monitoring their kids on social networks. One of the more interesting numbers was that 75% of parents monitor their kids' pages on social networks. This is the good news. My instinct tells me that most of these 75% are performing this task using an occasional manual method instead of a consistent 'always-on' automated approach such as YouDiligence. See the article.

Inspiration from Madeleine and Anna Quindlan

One never knows where inspiration is going to come from. I got some from an unusual source the other night: an essay on the Madeleine children book series, "Mad about Madeleine", written by Anna Quindlen (which I have not been able to find published on the web in a cursory search).

But toward the end of the essay, Ms. Quindlen writes the line, "Children prize both security and adventure, both bad behavior and conformity, both connections and independence." To me, this is a perfect encapsulation of childhood, and especially the journey through the tweens and teenage years toward adulthood and independence.

From the outside, I am sure I was perceived as adventuresome, independent, non-conformist and a bit of a troublemaker. But this is not the real story. The real story involved a real daily tension between all the opposites listed in Ms.Quindlen's lines. I had a real pull toward security, conformity and connections on a daily basis, and I am sure my journey was more the rule than the exception.

This idea mirrors the concept of all of us having a nature half monster and half angel. And this nature is why YouDiligence is important for parents. Even the best behaved kids will have episodes where they are pulled off their good behavior axis. In other words, good kids have a daily struggle being good--it is hard to be good all the time.

The YouDiligence platform recognizes this daily struggle. YouDiligence platform also recognizes that independence is very important to all kids. We designed YouDiligence explicitly to respect this fact, and to try to create a platform that could simultaneously respect kids' privacy and give parents the peace of mind in knowing that their kids have a safety net for those times when the kids are not behaving as appropriately or safely as parents would hope,

LA Times Editorial Stance on Cyberbullying

The LA Times had an interesting editorial the other day against schools enforcing anti-cyberbullying activities for actions taken off of school grounds.

The arguments of the editorial "Schools should not be responsible for policing Cyberbullying" definitely have merits from a legal standpoint. What is not discussed in the editorial is the fact that a huge amount of cyberbullying and bullying in general activities of kids have their genesis in the school setting, and therefore to some degree they bear some responsibility.

So rather than hiding behind legal frameworks, schools should be doing everything in their power to fight against bullying and cyberbullying. They should be empowering teachers to crack down forcefully on bullying within their hallways--which inevitably lead to cyberbullying outside their hallways.

The first line of the editoriaI is "Parents, not schools, are the first line of defense against cyberbullying." While this is true, it is by no means the entire story. Schools need to do everything they can to help parents in this regard. Take the example of Ryan Halligan--I know that Ryan's father did what he could to help and protect his son. It is adding cruelty to injury to suggest that he should have done more. There are far too many stories like those of Ryan Halligan, and as a society, we should be thinking of ways to prevent these tragedies rather than focusing on legal merits.

Elementary School Kids Using Facebook

A Tennessee elementary principal is warning parents that many children in his school are using Facebook, seemingly to attract a boyfriend or girlfriend. While this is not shocking, it should put internet safety for their kids as paramount in parents' minds.

http://ydurl.com/p6xw

Parents understand most children are still learning how to interact socially at that age, but yet the 20-30 hours a week the kids spend on social networking sites are mostly unsupervised. This is a recipe for trouble or worse. Internet predators prey on these unsuspecting and impressionable youngsters looking for attention. Cyber-bullies use social networks to threaten and scare them.

Parents need to protect their children from these unfortunate realities, and YouDiligence (www.youdiligence.com) can help.

Another Cyberbullying Story

I try to make it a habit of presenting YouDiligence to at least one school or church organization every week. Last week, I spoke to the PTO of Fairfield (outside of St. Albans). It seems like at every one of these presentations, I hear a cyberbullying story. In fact, one of my primary tasks at all of these meetings is to just listen. Kids' online activity raises a lot of uncertainty for parents.

It is hard enough dealing with uncertainty for just oneself. When one's kids are involved, worrying over uncertainty goes to a whole other level.

At the meeting, a woman said she had really wished that she had known about YouDiligence two months ago, and she related the story of how her daughter was recently cyberbullied. Her story had all the classic aspects of cyberbullying that I have heard repeatedly in different forms and shapes. The mother noticed that her daughter had been moody and uncommunicative for weeks and weeks, and knew something was up, but the daughter did not want to share. Finally, the cyber bullying episode reached a point where the daughter broke down, and realized she could not control the situation. This is when the mother got involved. The mother did not share the exact specifics, but she felt that much pain and suffering would have been spared if she could have stepped into the situation much earlier.

And that is a very important point. Kids in their tweens and early teens are struggling with issues of control and mastery. And parents want to encourage this mastery--we are proud of our kids' mastering skills and knowledge growth. But the truth of the matter is that young kids should 'be spotted', and in fact, they want to know that their parents are doing so. The tricky part of adolescence for both kids and parents is navigating this path from very dependent (under 10 years old, and wanting to be spotted) to ostensibly independent (hopefully by 18-19, and resentful if parents are still trying to spot them).

When considering kids' online activities in terms of this navigation path, it is entirely understandable why internet safety has become the number one concern for parents.

2,116 Convicted North Carolina Sexual Predators had MySpace Accounts

Parents in North Carolina can rest a little easier as their attorney general struck a blow for internet safety by identifying 2,116 sexual predators in NC that had MySpace accounts -- and MySpace shut them down.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/10/nc.sex.offenders/index.html

In the last month there have been almost 100,000 sexual predators' accounts shut down on MySpace and Facebook combined. But that's out of nearly 400 million accounts -- uh, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that this represents a very incomplete accounting for the likely actual number of predators on those sites. These were just the predators dumb enough to use their real names -- and finally someone decided to run a check comparing the MySpace and Facebook roster against the convicted sexual predator database. It's not just the names that need to be checked. It couldn't be more clear, for the safety of their kids, parents need to consider monitoring their kids' pages.

Studies show kids spend over 30 hours per week online, mostly unsupervised. How likely is it that they come into contact with a predator or are bullied by their peers? That's a question parents must ask themselves.

Fortunately parents now have help. YouDiligence (http://www.youdiligence.com)/sends email alerts to parents when questionable material is posted on their kids' sites -- providing some peace of mind.

Bullying is Incredibly Destructive

As I was watching some Parry Aftab YouTube videos (the leader of Wired Safety) I stumbled across this video. It is incredibly powerful and sad. It very simply and effectively shows a string of kids in a series of still photos taken during happier times of their short lives. To think that all these sweet kids killed themselves after being bullied is heartbreaking.



Reading the connected comments is a whole other story. As an adult who survived adolescence with, what I figure is a common mixture of, pride about how I handled some situations and shame how I handled others, it makes me uncomfortable to read the comments of what I assume are mostly young people.

There are the heartless and cold "only losers get bullied" statements.

There are the bravado "I was bullied from 7th-12th grade. Even after high school people have messed with me even to this day. But I learned to take all the things they say about you and find something to release it and make yourself a much better, tougher person. I did this by working out in a gym and ran into a few kids from high school, some that gave me shit, and they just stared in awe like they couldn't believe it. I just walked by as if they were dirt under my shoes. Not saying a word or nothing" statements.

Neither gives me much comfort, or illuminates a path out of the darkness of bullying. It's likely most kids experience, at some point, both sides of the exchange--they have bullied someone, and they have been bullied. In this day and age when cyber-bullying has provided a larger platform and audience for this behaior, it may be important for parents and educators to think about this when trying to guide kids away from the incredibly destructive behavior of bullying -- on the play ground or online.

5600 -- Really? Facebook Only Identifies 5600 Sexual Predators' Accounts

The sincerity of social networking sites regarding Internet safety can be questioned after the latest news from Facebook. See this TechDirt post:

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090220/1017023844.shtml#comments

During a week of taking a public relations beating and a subsequent user rebellion over claiming perpetual ownership rights to the content posted by its users, Facebook followed MySpace's lead to identify and remove known, convicted sexual predators from its site. What's curious is that out of Facebook's 100+ million subscribers only 5600 were registered sexual predators. By contrast, MySpace found over 90,000 -- this also seems really low when compared to their number of subscribers, which they put at 200+ million.

5600 -- Really? That's about as believable as Alex Rodriguez's partial-kind-of-not-so-much-yeah-I-was-young-and-dumb (hey it worked for Michael Phelps) explanation of his steroid use. One has to ask several questions:

• How hard did Facebook really look?


• How committed is Facebook to Internet safety?


• Is Facebook really concerned about the safety of their users?

We should probably commend the social networks for however reluctantly beginning to take small steps towards making their product safer. However it clearly further identifies the need for parents to protect their kids online.

YouDiligence (www.youdiligence.com) helps parents with this daunting task. YouDiligence doesn't rely on the honesty of sexual deviants to identify themselves. It works even if false identities are being used. YouDiligence scans the content itself of what is posted on kids pages, helping parents identify suspicious and troubling posts. Parents have the control to customize the search criteria that's used to alert them to troubling posts by their children and others on their children's sites. Once an issue is identified, YouDiligence emails the parent an alert in real-time.

BSOT = Be Safe Online Tonight

Using Social Networks to Share a Story

With all the issues of cyber-bullying and online predators dominating the news the last couple of weeks, two high school sports stories really stuck out to me this week that are from opposite ends of the spectrum. They have nothing to do with either cyber-bullying or online predators -- instead they are examples of how we shouldn't and should use social networks to share a story. The first story, unfortunately, did make the rounds on social networking pages, and the second story, which could likely win an ESPY this year, has yet to be seen online except in the media.


The first story comes out of the state high school basketball tournament in South Caroline. A video was posted on a social networking site of a huge brawl after a hard foul near the end of the game. The stands emptied and players and fans on both teams were involved in a 20 minute plus melee, the footage was posted on several social networking sites, and ultimately made it into the mainstream media.


The second story is of an act of sportsmanship and character that makes tears well up in your eyes. The short version is a Wisconsin high school basketball player's 39 year old mother unexpectedly died of cancer. He showed up to his game over 2 hours away to play after saying he wouldn't be there. He walked in after the game began and asked to play. Knowing the situation, the other team stopped the game, let him get dressed and come to the court. His coach had not put his name in the score book, so upon entering the game, he would be assessed a technical foul. The other team argued they didn't want the call, but the referee insisted. After gathering his players and asking which one wanted to take the shots, a senior guard raised his hand. He looked at the coach and said, "You know I'm going to miss, right?" the coach nodded. He took his spot at the free throw line and took the ball from the referee and twice took shots that barely made it past his arms -- obvious intentional misses. This received a standing ovation from the crowd, all of whom knew what the situation was.


This is the kind of story that needs to be shared on social networking sites -- it shows character and leadership. Let's hope that whoever had their cell phone or camcorder rolling at this point in the game will post it sometime soon. It surely will receive serious consideration for an ESPN ESPY award. For now, we have the story:


http://sports.espn.go.com/highschool/rise/basketball/boys/news/story?id=3914375

Peers are a larger group than Predators

A good article appeared in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Biggest online threat is peers, not predators . It is a balanced view of the ongoing debate between internet safety experts. Some experts are focused on the dangers posed by predators, and some are focused on cyber-bullying and child development issues. The following quote is something that we stress all the time here at YouDiligence:

Morris-Reichenbach says parents need to step in to closely monitor their children’s online activities and help their children make good decisions in cyberspace.

“Parents need to tell their kids: ‘You send something, you post something to a friend, and you have to live with it being out in cyberspace forever. If you have any doubt, don’t do it,’ ” she said.

Parents Should be Concerned about Internet Safety for Kids

This item from Indiana today where police arrested a 28 year old man who had repeatedly had sex with a 14 year old girl he met on MySpace.

http://www.theindychannel.com/news/18688318/detail.html

This news only reinforces the fact that sexual predators troll social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace looking for unsuspecting victims, especially children. It is a parents' right to protect their children from harm, and many parents need help to make the internet safer for their kids.

YouDiligence makes it easier for parents to know who their kids are interacting with online, and alerting them to risky internet activity on their children's social networking accounts.

Larry Magid, the Internet Safety Guru, Discusses State Attorneys' MySpace Report

Larry Magid who is connected to the organization ConnectSafely.Org has written an interesting response to the State Attorneys General report about MySpace kicking 90,000 sexual predators off their site. Check it out: Magid Article

One of Magid's comments that sticks out is:

"Online safety groups and public officials should be spending our time educating families on how to avoid real risks that affect most kids-- like bullying, harassment and unwanted exposure to inappropriate material."

He says we should focus on the above issues and points out:

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is one of several safety organizations that no longer condone the use of the phrase "stranger danger."

Facebook Impostors Raise Internet Safety Concerns

Here is another story about the dangers of social networking and Internet safety. People posing as someone else, and then getting the real person's friends to send money to the impostor. This is the ultimate cyber-bullying.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/05/facebook.impostors/index.html

At UDiligence, (YouDiligence's product for college athletic departments) we have run into this problem when protecting the online reputations of student-athletes. We have found a number of "poser" pages that were put up in malice, intending to damage the reputations of the athletes.

Two of the instances involved female soccer players, who had MySpace pages that they didn't create, but that said very graphic and sexually explicit things about them. UDiligence notified the school and helped get the pages taken down, saving the long term reputation issues for the athletes, who were graduating and looking for jobs.

BSOT = Be Safe Online Tonight

Wisconsin Sexual Predator on Facebook

The day after MySpace announced that they had removed more than 90,000 sexual predators with accounts from trolling their social network, this story appears out of Wisconsin. An 18 year old male faked being a girl and then solicited and blackmailed teenage boys into having sex with him by claiming he would expose nude photos of them if they didn't comply.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ihOT1uPILQwicwpDuJO4bLWFdnRAD965CPNO0
If ever there was a case that shows how YouDiligence could have helped parents protect children, this is it. YouDiligence searches kids pages for words that predators and cyber-bullies use, and alerts parents by email when it finds a match on their kids' MySpace or Facebook pages.

BSOT = Be Safe Online Tonight

YouDiligence is Effective at Identifying Cyber Bullying

One question I get asked a lot is "How can YouDiligence help my child if they are being cyber bullied. I have their login and password, and can check whenever I want." It is a good question. I usually answer this question with the following points.

First off, just having a login and password can be a false sense of comfort. My brother had his kids' login and password, but rarely went into their pages. Episodes of cyber bullying can happen very quickly. Even if you as a parent go in once every two weeks, a lot can happen in two weeks.

One of the critical features of YouDiligence is the real-time nature of alerts and reports. If you're child is starting to experience cyber bullying, you want to know today, not happen upon a glimpse of this two weeks down the line.

Another very important piece of information is how is your child behaving themselves in the episode. Is their behavior in some way encouraging a cyber bully? Is there a single individual or group involved in the episode(s)? YouDiligence can help a parent analyze a situation by looking at their child's comments on others' pages. If one tried to do this without YouDiligence, the task becomes an arduous and time consuming activity.

YouDiligence saves time and helps parents be involved in a less invasive, but more effective way than simply blindly searching their kids' sites for that proverbial needle in a haystack. Now parents can know what they're looking for and if something of consequence is happening in real-time.

Cyber Bullying Heats Up.

The topic of cyber bullying is heating up. There are 10 or so stories a day being reported. There is still quite a debate on how to prevent this for parents and teens. There's an even greater debate on how to respond when it happens to you or your children. One of the largest discussions on this topic is centered around the legal aspects of this type of attack. This is new territory for all involved. Cyber bullying is a whole new breed of ridicule that isn't always as visible as the type on the playground. 

As the law and ways to respond to and prevent cyber bullying become more clear, we'll continue to follow and report developments as well as our suggestions.

Here's one of the several stories that came out today on this topic. It includes several tips on dealing with cyber bullying. Early detection is one of the best ways to stop this before it's a serious problem for anyone.

"Protect kids with these online tips"

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.

Harvard, Internet Safety and Cyber Bullying

Harvard recently published results of a study on Internet Safety. Contrary to what many people believed, they concluded that the internet may in fact be safer than expected. The reaction to the study has been quite varied. Although some people are expressing relief, others are still pointing out the variety of abuses that can occur online. Hopefully this debate will encourage further study on online safety.

Here's a fascinating story of a woman who's child was the victim of Cyber Bullying. It points out that potential problems may be found in places not yet researched. It also points out the tremendous effect to correct such online bullying.

Link: 'I want to share with you my son's cyber bullying experience.'