The number one question parents continue to ask around digital safety is: "What do I do if my child becomes a target of cyberbullying?" Unfortunately, so much of the cyberbullying advice you find online only scratches the surface, such as: "Save all the evidence. Tell an adult." This is about as helpful as a skydiving instructor shouting out instructions on how to pull the ripcord after you've already jumped.

To protect your kids against cyberbullying, you must take a proactive approach. Cyberbullying is like war with methods of attack and strategies of self-defense. Do not wait until the moment your child experiences online defamation and harassment to formulate a plan.  In our award-winning cyberbullying guide for adults, Cyberslammed, we employ the strategic advice of a martial artist, who also happens to be a bullying counselor.

First, start with the basic strategies of self-defense.

How many digital devices does your child use? If you haven't already had a conversation with your child on what is considered acceptable and unacceptable behavior surrounding the use of these devices, start now. Likely you already own the devices and that's your leverage. Here's how one Massachusetts mom got her son to sign an 18-point agreement on the condition of receiving his new iPhone. Use her strategy to discuss cell phone and computer use with your child.

Next, get familiar with the most frequent apps and social media platforms your teen is drawn to. Learn how cyberbullying really works on these particular platforms. For example, Twitter is great for teen connection, but it is also being used as a "slut-shaming" tool and a virtual slam book. Don't know what these tactics are? Stay on top of it with our Hot Topics blog on the most common types of cyberbullying.

Next, have a talk about conflict. Conflict is the root of most cyberbullying situations and it is inevitable your child will be involved in conflict at some point with a friend, a boyfriend/girlfriend, a teacher or even a stranger. Whether your child is the target, the instigator or caught in the cross-fire, "pre-playing" the potential outcomes to the conflict is key. My mother used to call this the "What would you do?" game. What would you do if a rival called you a "slut" on Facebook? What would you do if your XBox gaming buddy tried to get other multi-players to gang up on you online? The key to heading off cyberbullying is building a plan of action...not reaction ahead of time.

Do you see now why "telling an adult and saving evidence" is practically useless advice if the adult in the situation still has no idea what to do? We encourage adults to approach a cyberbullying incident exactly the same way we instruct kids:

Cool Off: Take time to cool off and talk it through before making an emotional snap judgment about the cyberbully’s actions. The emotional mind works much faster than the rational mind and skips important steps when you are angry and upset. Don’t react when you are in “flight or fight mode” out of defensiveness and anger and wait until your rational mind has had a chance to catch up.

Gather Perspective: To get to the bottom of the issue, gather additional perspective from as many other students and adults who were directly involved. When dealing with the cyberbully's parents, acknowledge that you are presenting your kid’s “truth” and don’t make assumptions until you’ve heard the other “truths” to the story as well. Remember: what may at first appear to be clear-cut may, in fact, only be a snapshot in an ongoing, more complicated conflict.

Make A Plan: Depending on the severity of the cyberbullying incident, find your allies, from school authorities to website/service providers to counselors to the child's own peers. In severe situations, you may also need to get the police or even an attorney, involved. This option needs to be carefully considered when there is serious harassment/threats, criminal behavior, extortion, obscene or harassing phone calls/texts, stalking, hate crimes, child pornography, sexual exploitation, or when the target’s photograph has been taken in a place where he or she would expect privacy and is now being misused.

As you work with others to resolve the cyberbullying situation, make sure your child never tries to "fight fire with fire" by responding to the online attack with a counter attack, for this will only worsen the situation and muddy the waters in determining who is culpable for cyberbullying.

Finally, experts in our book say the way to build your child's resiliency throughout an attack is be a support for him or her daily. Inviting peer support during this time is also crucial to getting through a traumatic incident.

Every cyberbullying situation is different, but this advice goes beyond the surface in helping you and your child be proactive. To learn more, including how to join our free monthly webinars, visit: www.cyberslammed.com


Kay Stephens is the co-author of the award-winning cyberbullying book Cyberslammed, sponsored by Time Warner Cable. Her latest tween cyberbullying e-book Ethel Is Hot LOL (Amazon $4.95) features Ethel, a smart-but-oddball 12-year-old who wants to be a NASA psychologist. Ethel finds herself blindsided by two girls looking for YouTube fame until she figures out a way to turn the media tables and get her reputation back.

WAH-LAH!  (Yes, we know that is not correct French.) Here is the latest cyberbullying novel from Kay Stephens, award-winning co-author of the cyberbullying guide for adults, Cyberslammed™

Ethel Is Hot LOL features twelve-year-old Ethel F. Effleby, who goes to the Seaside School for Girls, a science and leadership middle school in Maine. After moving in with her Gram, Ethel is just fine with her oddball self until a group of girls create a website called Ethel Is Hot LOL!! making fun of her and her family secrets. When the cyberbullying gets so bad that she has to face her enemy, Stephönë on national TV, Ethel confronts her greatest fear yet. To clear her name will she have to expose her humiliation to the world?

Email us if you'd like to review the new novel and receive it for free! Info@cyberslammed.com

Earlier this month, a 15-year old from St. Petersburg, FL was arrested for sending “hundreds of threatening text messages” over the course of eight days to former friends. Some were even death threats. The suspect used a smartphone app called Kik Messenger, which happens to be the cyberbullying app du jour, also used in the Rebecca Ann Sedwick cyberbullying case that contributed to her suicide. Kik allows users to send text messages from an Internet Desk Top to cell phones.

The tactic is called “text bombing”

Huffington Post writer Ann Brenoff deftly addresses this tactic in her article, “What Every Parent Needs to Know About Text Bombs.” Her article did a great job identifying some of the apps used to do the cyberbully’s “dirty work,” but before we get into that, let’s drill down a little deeper into the motivation behind text bombing.

With text bombing, there are two ways to inflict harm.

The first way, like most cyberbullying tactics, is rooted in emotional conflict. The ex-friend, the ex-beau, the jealous peer, etc. lashes out in anger, and in extreme moment, repeatedly texts the most hurtful thing anyone can think of, e.g., you don’t matter. Go kill yourself. I will find you and destroy you.

For example, in the St. Petersburg case, the teen suspect learned that one of her target’s relatives had recently committed suicide, so she began bombarding her ex-friend with messages to do the same.

The second way to text bomb relies on apps to do the dirty work by sending a message hundreds of times as a way to harass the target, break their phone or even cost them money. Popular text bombing apps mentioned in Brenoff’s article included SMSBOMBER (Android) and SMSBARRAGE before the Google App store got wise to it and banned them.  However, these text-bombing apps can be found anywhere. A simple Google search finds more SMS bombing apps like those from Cydia that anyone can learn to use in minutes.

With my cyberbullying columns, I’m always trying to identify the latest tactic and provide educators and parents with technological and behavior tips to prevent it.

First the tech tips: The way to block multiple duplicated messages from any sender is through Anti-SMS Text Bomb (Android). The link to this page also includes several other anti-sms bombing apps for other phones.

And according to NY Daily News, there’s a new app being developed, called STOPit, which students download to their phones. It enables students to easily capture malicious behavior with their Apple or Droid smart phone and send it to adult contacts or officials with the touch of a button — and in some cases anonymously.

As usual, the public reaction to this text bomb tactic is shrill, bordering on exasperation. Said one HuffPo commenter: “Here's an idea.....don't give a cell phone to a kid [who] doesn't think that each and every keystroke equals $$$$$$. If they are STILL too young to understand the value of a $ then they are too young for a cell phone.”

According to the latest Pew Internet and American Life study on Teens and Technology (March 2013) 78% of teens (12-17) now have a cell phone, and almost half (47%) of those own smartphones. An earlier study in 2010,  found that most teenagers with cell phones have family plans paid by their parents.

When you give a child or teenager a cell phone or computer of any type, you are giving them limitless power to do good or to do harm. And likely, you are footing the bill, so you already have leverage for encouraging their ethical behavior around texting.

An ongoing conversation needs to accompany the privilege of owning a smartphone. Do you discuss with your child:

• Sending any form of text bomb is considered harassment and will not be tolerated. Do you spell out the consequences for this behavior?
• Does your child know they don’t have the right to say anything they want? Anytime a child’s language approaches bodily threats and harassment, it is not protected by freedom of speech and it is quite conceivable he or she can be arrested.
• Does your child know some states are considering holding the parents’ liable for the child’s cyberbullying actions?

The tools, the tactics and the technology are all going to change. Six months down the road; we are likely going to have a whole new set of apps and digital devices connected with cyberbullying. But the conversation between kids and their parents (and schools) should be about the expected and appropriate behavior when handed a technological device. Are you having that conversation already?

Get all of the tactics in one book and prepare your child to recognize and defuse certain types of cyberbullying. Sale: $12.50 Buy The Book

If you're under 18, then yeah, it's a very bad idea. Worse, if you're over 18 and dating someone younger than 18.

Parents of teenagers who are in relationships with cellphones are you listening?

Any nude or semi-nude photos that are transmitted electronically (even just sent via cell phone) are considered in many states to be child pornography trafficking, even if the juvenile is sending a photo of himself or herself. The laws vary from state to state, but here in our home state of Maine, for example, the law is extremely harsh.

According to Mobile Media Guard "Under Maine law anyone - regardless of age - who creates, distributes or possesses an image of a minor engaged in a sexually explicit act may be prosecuted under the State’s child pornography laws and if convicted, may serve up to 10 years in jail and be required to register as a sex offender."

Most kids and adults I've spoken to at statewide presentations over the last few months know the term "sexting," but had no idea the stiff penalties associated with it. Furthermore, most adults and kids didn't realize that if they encountered a sext on a cell phone or via the Internet, they, themselves could possibly be arrested for forwarding that photo electronically in any way--even to the authorities!

The fact that 36% of Americans (I'm assuming they polled adults) are admitting to engaging in what is called "consensual sexting" is frankly not a surprise. Teens engage in this form of relationship currency all the time. They're calling them "Selfies" self-shot provocative photos, an absolutely beautifully narcissistic way to capture one's youth. Thanks Rihanna!

When it stops being "consensual" and begins being cyberbullying is the moment the relationship turns sour or ends. This is the kind of "what would you do" talk you should be having with your teenagers who own cell phones. For example:

Parent: "What happens when Joe or Mary decides to spread your image around to all 500 of his/her Facebook friends?"

Teen: "He/she would never do that!" i

When 1 in 5 sext recipients report they have passed the images along to someone else and more than half (55%) of those who have reported sending them to someone else say they shared them with more than one person--try saying that again with a straight face.

Get all of the tactics in one book and prepare your child to recognize and defuse certain types of cyberbullying. Summer Sale: $12.50 Buy The Book

I'm sure every pair of eyes were on Amanda Todd's mother when she got up before a group of Metro Vancouver mothers in her first public appearance since her daughter's death.

"If my daughter didn't believe everyone at the end of that Internet was innocent she would be alive today," she said in a November 5 Vancouver Sun story 

As always, the point of this blog is to examine the tactics used in individual cyberbullying cases and to dissect them as a way to provide parents and educators with teachable moments for the kids in their lives.
According to an article in Digital Journal, when Amanda was 12 years old, she flashed her breasts to a boy she'd met online through a webcam she was using with friends.

"Police knocked on her door early on Christmas Eve of that year to tell her the picture had been posted online. This began her slide into depression that included anxiety, substance abuse, and cutting herself."

Not knowing the family personally, I can only speculate, but it sounds as if the girls were role playing a flirty version of "Girls Gone Wild" like it was a joke, a lark.This type of Sexting happens all the time; it's what author Nancy Willard Executive Director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use characterizes as a way to negotiate relationship issues, not actual cyberbullying Sexting. At 12, Todd probably wouldn't have thought what kind of terrible consequences could derive from flashing a stranger.

But the cyberbullying instantly started with a nasty Digital Pile On as well as morphed offline into physical bullying where Todd was actually beaten up by a group of teens.

In the Vancouver Sun article, Carol Todd told the group: "Amanda eventually came to realize the mistakes that she made from that one night when she was 12 years old," Todd told the crowd, referring to an incident in which Amanda flashed someone on the Internet. "She never thought it would come to haunt her for the rest of her life. It was a mistake - it became a life sentence and in the end, it contributed to her death."

Webcams or smartphones--the technology doesn't matter-when it comes to Sexting, there are multiple reasons to do it and the underlying conversation every mother needs to be having with her daughter before the new phone is handed over is: Can I trust you to protect yourself with this device? Pre-play with them the various scenarios.

Tell her what happened to Amanda, to thousands of girls across the country whose innocent mistakes have come back to haunt them. The Sexting conversation is essential in every household these days, more than any other topic we cover in our book. The technology will always be available. It's up to us to prevent the behavior.

Get all of the tactics in one book and prepare your child to recognize and defuse certain types of cyberbullying. Sale: $12.50 Buy The Book