News stories

Summit aims to shut down cyberbullying

by Cara Metz | published September 8, 2011

Pat Arnow

High school students who work with the drama and arts group ENACT created an original skit to highlight the dangers of sexting. After many pleas from her boyfriend, a girl sends him a topless photo, meant to be just for him, but with just the press of a button, it reaches far and wide into the school community. View more photos.>>

Resources to help prevent cyberbullying

Commonsensemedia.org works with the New York City Department of Education to teach digital citizenship and internet safety. Their website includes resources for parents and free classroom curriculum for educators in grades K – 12. There are lesson plans by grade and by topic, to introduce concepts so students understand how and where to draw the line.

WiredSafety.org runs on volunteers worldwide and provides one-to-one help, information and education to cyberspace users of all ages on interactive technology safety, privacy and security issues.

Cyberbullying Research Center has resources such as an electronic dating violence guide for parents and educators and cyberbullying fact sheets and a blog.

Connectsafely.org has social media safety tips for parents and teens and updates on latest developments in technology.

Don’t Stand By, Stand Up is a Facebook page aimed at creating good online citizenship for all. It was created by a high school classmate of Tyler Clementi to honor his memory and ensure that others aren’t hurt as he was. Clementi committed suicide after his Rutgers University roommate streamed his private life on the web.

Teaching Tolerance is a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center with a magazine and website that connect social media with a wide range of social justice issues; the website includes classroom activities for teachers in grades K - 12.

Netsmartz.org has information for kids, parents, educators and law enforcement to promote a safer online experience.

ENACT is a group that works with New York City students using theatre and role play to deal with issues of concern to students.

New York Peace Institute provides dispute resolution services for schools, including mediation and conflict resolution training.

“We’ve all seen bullying happen, but when I was a kid, you could find places to escape where no one could bother you — you could go home. That literally doesn’t exist anymore,” said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn as she welcomed an audience of a few hundred parents, teachers, students and child advocates to a July 18 summit on cyberbullying held at the Times Center in Manhattan. “Today, bullying can continue 24/7 and it becomes part of your permanent record that really never goes away.”

To combat cyberbullying and create a sense of what it means to be a good citizen on the web, Quinn was joined by a host of adults, including Parry Aftab of WiredSafety.org, fellow council members Robert Jackson, Lewis Fidler and Gale Brewer, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance and cybersafety experts from Facebook, MTV, AT&T, Microsoft and others — and a group of students who in many ways took the lead in the evening’s televised summit.

City high school students led off with a skit on sexting that showed just how easy it is for a life-altering invasion of privacy to occur. A panel of aged 13-19 “teenangels” from WiredSafety discussed how the seamy side of the web has affected them and their friends and how they have learned to make their online experiences safer. “There are more of us who care about children being bullied than there are those who do the bullying,” Quinn said.

Pat ArnowNew York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn welcomes parents, teachers, students and community advocates to the Cyberbullying Summit to learn from each other and make the online world safer. “There are more of us who care about children being bullied than there are those who do the bullying,” Quinn said.

“Cyberbullying happens all the time,” said student panelist Keiko, who as captain of a step team was the recipient of threatening messages. In too many cases, students never turn to an adult to discuss what is going on. Thirteen-year-old Joshua explained that if you put your cell phone down, someone can pick it up, send out threatening messages to a third party and get you in trouble, known as “cyberbullying by proxy.”

Students described their Facebook pages hacked into and changed, the “honesty box” on formspring (a social networking site popular among middle and high school students) being turned into a “hate box” and other devastating online “short-term actions” that have “long-term effects,” as Josh, who lived through the experience, described it.

While students may adapt to and use technology more quickly than adults, they also lack the judgment to fully comprehend its power and the ways in which it can be used and abused.

Pat ArnowTeacher Amy Dawson, of MS 113 in Brooklyn, shared her anguish about students who created fake profiles and called classmates derogatory names that are “so devastating to my students.”

Teacher Amy Dawson, of MS 113 in Brooklyn, shared her anguish about students who created fake profiles and called classmates derogatory names that are “so devastating to my students.” Anna Maria Thomas, a health and physical education teacher at Brooklyn HS of the Arts, said, “I have to tell students to stop taking pictures of other students in the locker room; they don’t understand why it’s wrong!”

Parent Amanda Cintron shared that her son was the victim of cyberbullying on Facebook. “It got really ugly to the point that I had to reach out to the parent of the girl who was sending this. ... The girl was 14 and had posted that she was 17. Eighteen and 19-year-old boys were interacting with her, which her mother didn’t know about.”

Making both parents and children more aware of tools to promote cybersafety was part of the takeaway from the evening’s summit.