The Cyber Age Of Bullying

I’ve been doing bully prevention training across North America for nine years. I myself was bullied and I was seeing it happen to my children too in school. I was a teacher so I started reading about how to help them with that problem and I realized how wide spread it was.

My first reaction to the video was surprise. They’re still bullying at 17 and 18, when developmentally they should have been doing it grade seven, eight or nine. In my opinion cyber technology has only prolonged bullying.

It seemed to me they must have seen this done somewhere else. It looked like retaliation on some of the things the victim was doing and it was thought out and planned. They must have seen a lot of cyber-bullying themselves to format it that way.

Technology has brought bullying to a new level. When I was a kid someone would call you then quickly hang up. Then *69 came along and it kind of stopped. New online technology has brought it to a higher level of intensity. The kind of things that were passive aggressive acts are now fully acted out. Instead of walking by someone in the hall and passively saying something, now they’re carrying it further.

It’s easier to say things online than you would on the phone or face to face. It’s easy to say, ‘You’re really good looking, do you want to go on a date?’ It’s also easier to say, ‘You’re a freaking loser and everyone hates you and we’re going to beat you up after school.’ It makes it really, really easy.

When I go to a community I do workshops with the students in the classroom. I teach them safe, non-violent ways they can stop someone from bullying.