Here's another story this week about a 10-year-old girl from Canada who found herself targeted by a group of girls at school.

According to CBC News, the mother made a Facebook post stating "a group of girls her age (10 yrs old) created a profile under her name... and have been commenting on (friends) photos telling them to go and kill themselves."

Most parents still don't know what this is, so we'll tell you. It's called an Imposter Profile, a cyberbullying tactic, in which the perpetrator(s) create a fake social media account in the name of the person they are targeting to get everybody to believe the account is owned and maintained by the target.

The article doesn't offer much in the way of resolution to this common tactic, we have an entire chapter dedicated to how to prevent and handle it in Cyberslammed, including when to bring in the school, the police or even the law.

As far as the horrible comment of "Go kill yourself" we have seen that tactic over and over again in cyberbullying as a way for the perpetrator to emotionally destroy someone. In school presentations I've done, I've told kids time and again to mentally prepare themselves for that phrase and to come up with self-talk ahead of time to protect themselves against it.

Here's hoping that little girl will be able to find strength and resilence and that her school will have a cyberbullying policy in place (also included in our book!).

Buy Cyberslammed online or contact me for a signed softcover copy.

Racism and xenophobia has been on the rise for years under the Obama administration. With Donald Trump's racist rhetoric and now the Brexit vote, kids are watching how adults behave. And they emulate what adults do and think. But one woman is using a household item to let people know they take to stand up against xenophobic or racist abuse in the wake of the Brexit referendum. It's a safety pin- a literal symbol that says to people: you can sit next to me on the bus. You can come to me for help.

Imagine if student allies of the bullied and cyberbullied all across the world adopted this trend? On the first day back to school, it would be such a relief to see someone wearing a pin and know you could sit next to them on the bus or you could sit next to them at lunch, talk to them in the hallway. A symbol of safety.

See the video here. Tweet and share #safetypin

The frustration of anonymous cyberbullying hits just about every school principal in every state. It's been going on for more than a decade, yet schools are still trying to wrap their heads around how to stop it. According to an article in www.publicopiniononline.com this school principal had had it up to here about some Twitter cyberbullying perpetrated by anonymous students. It's not entirely clear from the article, but the tactic sounds very similar to a Twitter Burn Book, in which the perpetrators posted negative comments about other students and faculty and encouraged bystanders to pile on.

I can certainly understand the frustration of this principal. There's a tendency to want to put a zero-tolerance policy in place in the face of out-of-control cyberbullying. But then, I noticed the "Acceptable Use" policy in the article. This is essentially the "guidelines" of many schools around a student's use of technology at school. However, it is completely inadequate in terms of defining for parents and students EXACTLY what constitutes cyberbullying behaviors.

Example of their "Acceptable Use" policy of prohibited behaviors:

• Use inappropriate language.
• Engage in personal attacks and harrassment of others.

Read: CASD Student Acceptable Use and Social Media Form

The problem is, most schools' Acceptable Use policies are a decade out of touch,  entirely too vague and open to interpretation. "Engage in personal attacks?" So, according to this guideline, if a kid calls another kid a "jerk" on his Facebook page, is that the definition of cyberbullying?

No. No. No.

It is an unkind word,  but does not fit the true definition of cyberbullying. But, how would administrators know that if they don't actually know what constitutes cyberbullying? It's like relying on non-attorneys to interpret a legal document. If you don't actually know what cyberbullying behaviors are, then you're likely to misinterpret them.

A better policy defines it like this:

Examples of conduct that may constitute cyberbullying include, but are not limited to:

1. Posting slurs or rumors or displaying any defamatory, inaccurate, disparaging, violent, abusive, profane, or sexually oriented material about a student on a website or other online application;
2. Posting misleading or fake photographs or digital video footage of a student on websites or creating fake websites or social networking profiles in the guise of posing as the target;
3. Impersonating or representing another student through use of that other student’s electronic device or account to send e-mail, text messages, instant messages (IM), or phone calls;
4. Sending e-mail, text messages, IM, or leaving voice mail messages that are mean or threatening, or so numerous as to bombard the target’s e-mail account, IM account, or cell phone; and
5. Using a camera phone or digital video camera to take and/or send embarrassing or “sexting” photographs of other students.

How are students supposed to intrinsically know what not to do if the administration has not provided any specific training around acceptable and unacceptable behaviors? You can't punish students without first defining what specific behaviors lead to specific consequences.

The better approach is to draft a specific cyberbullying policy and then institute compassionate training for both students and teachers. Education is the only way to stop this. All experts repeatedly say this. But a school has to be willing to put in the extra time and effort to invest in social-emotional training.

Maine, our home state, put together a very comprehensive school policy on Internet use and cyberbullying, using parts of our cyberbullying book, Cyberslammed.  If you really want to get the cart in front of the horse,

• Update your school policies now. Click to see a good example
  
• Implement some long-range cyberbullying training for staff and students (not just some fly-by- night assembly that students will forget in six weeks.)
• Use resources like Cyberslammed and other cyberbullying prevention curricula like Common Sense Media to effectively guide the trainings.

Cyberslammed was used in part to construct Maine's official cyberbullying policy for all schools. 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