Cyberbullying

 

When we think about cyberbullying as educators, we sometimes brush over the topic, or justify not getting involved since it takes place off school campus.  Due to the pandemic, most students noe have access to the internet via school laptops.  Many of my 5^th graders also have cell phones and do bring them to school even though our policy is that they cannot use them in school.  In the past, I have been guilty of teaching internet safety and using the generalized scare tactics, stating bullying someone online may result in them taking their own life, and/or be careful about the information you share because of sexual predators.  More recently, students have been more open about their experiences on social media and with bullying, which has changed my mind on how to address the issue with individual students and classes as a whole.   No longer can we say this should be handled at home. Educators must look more closely at how they present information and choose curriculum regarding internet safety and the importance of digital citizenship. 

One place any educator could start is Commonsensemedia.org.  This site contains an abundance of information for parents, teachers, and advocates including their Digital Citizenship Curriculum that provides lesson plans and activities for all age groups on topics such as internet safety and cyberbullying.  Cyberbullying.org is another great website which provides a variety of videos for educators to use when delivering instruction on digital citizenship.  This site has videos for all ages and as an upper elementary teacher about to teach younger students in a library setting, I appreciate the videos for our youngest learners.   In the past I have used BrainPop  and find that students can relate to videos and articulate the learning objective however, I have not seen it make much of an impact on students.  It seems as though our students are becoming more detached and mean in their group chats and on social media.   Therefore, there is a great need to invest time and experiences for the educators at my school about the importance of implementing a digital citizenship curriculum. This coming school year I plan to work with our current librarian, school counselor, and administration to develop a plan for making digital citizenship a priority in our school. 

In this week readings I was not surprised by the results of a Bickham, et. al. (2021) study evaluating a digital citizen curriculum done with 7th grade students regarding gender differences in aggression.  Researchers found that, “Cyberbullying among males tends to be outwardly aggressive, with more threats of violence and direct insults, whereas females are more likely to post gossip with the intent to harm their peers.”  This seems to be a given even with younger students.  My male students tend to be more aggressive and my female students tend to be more passive aggressive towards their peers.  What interested me about the study and made me think about how I address curriculum in the future, is the need to provide instruction based on the type of cyberbullying more common in different genders.  Maybe we should separate students and teach them different skills that apply to different types of cyberbullying.  Maybe female students would be more open about discussing the types of bullying they deal with and/or participate in since often they might feel less apt to participate or talk about their feelings regarding said topic in front of their male peers and vice versa. What do you think?

References

 

Bickham D, Moukalled S, Inyart H, Zlokower R. (2021). Evaluating a Middle-School Digital Citizenship Curriculum (Screenshots): Quasi-Experimental Study. JMIR Mental Health 2021;8(9):e26197. DOI: 10.2196/26197