Science Daily reports on new research that has just come out of The University of Georgia that shows increased screen time with male adolescents leads to potentially more cyberbullying behaviors.

According to the article, "Cyberbullying can take on many forms, including personal attacks, harassment or discriminatory behavior, spreading defamatory information, misrepresenting oneself online, spreading private information, social exclusion and cyberstalking."

With Cyberslammed, we already know that this results in the tactics of Digital Pile-ons (harassment or discriminatory behavior) and Imposter Profiles (misrepresenting oneself online) to name a few.

Anonymity is driver

A key finding to a cyberbully's motivation is all about evading consequences "Oftentimes, they are more aggressive or critical on social media because of the anonymity they have online and their ability to avoid retaliation," said Amanda Giordano, principal investigator of the study and associate professor in the UGA Mary Frances Early College of Education.

Social media addiction=dopamine hit

Like all addicitons, the little switch in the brain that turns on when there is a reward also fuels cyberbullying.

"Social networking sites are designed to give people a dopamine hit, Giordano added, and some people compulsively look for that hit. "It's feeding into that addictive behavior, and they may be using cyberbullying as a way to get likes, shares, comments and retweets," she said.

Read the full article here.

Ethel is now available in paperback! Unlike reality stars who have to post nude selfies to get attention, here's a plucky little heroine who has braved unwarranted cyberbullying and stood up for herself in the bravest way possible. Go Ethel! Here's a partial Goodreads review of the book.

"As soon as I started reading this book, I was intrigued. Ethel is no ordinary girl, and she seems to fit in well at school, even with her unusual style and vibrant personality. I liked her right away, and I couldn't stop reading to find out how things would turn out for her."

"I love the diversity in this book, not just of race, but also of culture, social status, and family structure. This book has it all!"

The grammar and writing style are very good. That's always a positive point for self-published novels, which, sadly, often contain numerous typos and grammar errors. Not this book, though. I can tell the author made extra effort in getting it perfect before publication (and chose a skilled editor)."
*** Read More

Welcome to our new short webinar series on what to watch for in Internet Safety and Cyberbullying

You can't stop cyberbulling if you can't define it. Our new digital savvy online class series will get you up to speed quickly on the tactics, techie apps and behaviors that lead to negative online interactions so you can be prepared to help a teen in your life prevent getting cyberbullied. This overview is the first in our six-part series.

Click here to watch the short 8 min webinar.

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

It's back to school, 2013 and sadly, another year starts off with another story of a 12-year-old Florida girl who committed suicide. According to news reports, Rebecca Ann Sedwick endured more than a year of harassment, online torment and threats from a group of girls before she broke down completely and made the sorrowful choice to end her life.

As many as 15 girls may have been involved. According to the International Business Times article:

"There were strong indications that Rebecca committed suicide due to being bullied online. Social media applications on her phone showed messages like 'Go kill yourself' and 'Why are you still alive?' the Ledger reported."

Most suicide and cyberbullying experts are not as comfortable as the media is in making such a strong correlation of cyberbullying to suicide as numerous (unreported) factors might have also played a part in Sedwick's decision, but the point of this blog is to analyze the methods of cyberbullying tactics and try to provide communities with insights on how to identify and prevent an attack from happening to children you care about.

The article went on to state:

"Judd said detectives are trying to investigate the social media applications that Sedwick used, including Kik and Ask.fm, but many of the websites are based in other countries."

First the technology:
Ask.fm, we already know, is a sketchy website operated in Latvia and is a popular social networking website among teens where users can ask other users questions, with the option of anonymity. I've seen many Ask.fm profiles and the callousness and viciousness from "anonymous" users is rampant. No kid should be using Ask.fm in my opinion, unless you're looking to be slammed and cyberbullied. (In the latest twist, some kids troll themselves on Ask.fm hoping to get their friends to protect them and write good things about them in a desperate bid for attention. Source:2paragraphs.com)

After a spate of high-profile teen suicides that have been connected to Ask.fm, the company has vowed to have better regulations including making a "report" button more prominent on the site; hiring more staff to moderate comments; and creating a "bullying/harassment" category alongside the existing categories of "spam or scam," "hate speech," "violence" and "pornographic content."

I don't know if the girls who were telling Sedwick to "go kill herself" did it on Ask.fm, or through Sedwick's Kik Messenger, a smartphone app that acts as an Instant Messenger and allows the user to share other features likes videos and images.

But we do know from news reports that Sedwick's parents shut down her Facebook account and even had her change schools. Regardless, the cyberbullying followed her when she switched social media mediums (such as from Facebook to Ask.fm).

From all that I can gather, this is another classic example of A Digital Pile On, what we, the authors of Cyberslammed, have termed a situation when a group viciously gangs up on one person through Facebook, Twitter, Ask.fm, a group chat, comments or Instant Messaging.

Sedwick might have been a target of a Digital Pile On from a multiple tech devices, websites and apps--where the behavior is the same, just the media changes.

There is no "armchair psychologist" instant solution to what happened in Sedwick's case, but one thing is clear: parents and schools need to be on top of an ongoing cyberbullying situation, particularly when a mob is involved.  They need to know exactly how and what their teens are communicating about in the midst of it. Cyberbullied kids are going to be compelled to know what others are saying about them, and will be loathe to abandon social media for fear the bullies will have the upper hand. But, to heal from a cyberbullying situation, the worst thing a teen can do is constantly monitor the ongoing abuse. It's like dying a little death every day. The cyberbullies want to lure them back in, so if they see their target on different social media platform, it will start all over again.

Get the teenager away from ongoing abuse. Make a plan to find peer or adult help to shepherd him or her through this painful process. Demand the school take appropriate action or take it to the next level. And keep vigilant to make sure your teen is still talking to you and working through the situation. At this point, it is smart to have your teen's social media on a keyword monitoring system, to alert you to words like "go kill yourself."  Don't take your eye off the situation until you are sure your teen has gotten through the entire traumatic incident without relapse.

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

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

Erin Gallagher, 13, an Irish teenager is the latest young person to be linked to a cyberbullying suicide, according to reports.

A Huffington Post article states:

"According to the Irish Independent, Erin Gallagher of Ballybofey was reportedly found dead by relatives on Saturday night. The teenager had allegedly "warned her tormentors" that she was intending to commit suicide only 24 hours before.

"U prob think it was funny when [I] f**in put a rope round my neck cause of yous [sic]," she wrote on Friday in a post on ask.fm, a popular social networking site. Her comment had reportedly been directed at an anonymous person who had been bullying her."
**
We need to first put out the statement that cyberbullying is rarely the sole cause of a teen suicide. You can read more about that here.

Ask.fm, the social media site Gallagher used is basically a site where your photo/profile is made public, anyone can make a comment or ask a question and you are supposed to answer it. It is an unmonitored site where anonymous aggressors can do a Digital Pile On. Kids DO NOT need to be on this site. If anything, they can have the option of a closed social group on Facebook. We know that when regular people don't have accountability online (their real identities aren't revealed along with their comments, the disinhibition effect takes over; i.e. "I don't see you face to face, therefore, I don't feel empathy for you.")

Like Rating Sites, this Ask.fm has no redeemable value for young kids. The one question I'd want to ask any young person who wants to be on this site is: "Why is public approval so important to you?" The larger issue to address is: how do you get what you need without having to go on sites like Ask.fm?

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

Texas 8th grader Brianna Sosa, 13 decided to go to her local news channel and tell her story after a summer of vicious cyberbullying.
According to Valleycentral.com, "The teen said it’s been going on the entire summer and it all started over a boy.

Sosa claims several girls have been attacking her and even creating fake accounts on Facebook under her name.

'They are just saying a whole bunch of stuff about me, mean ugly mean stuff,” Sosa said. “And that same girl made a fake profile of herself telling everyone it's me.'"

The term is: Imposter Profile. It's one of several tactics that her cyberbullies used to denigrate her and break her down. They also participated in a Digital Pile On when they began bombing her Facebook page with mean and nasty comments.
"Brianna's mother tells Action 4 News she forced her daughter to delete her Facebook account when she found out about the alleged cyber bullying, and began documenting all the postings and alleged fake profiles."

The mother did the right thing, first by shutting down anything on Brianna that could be used against her and by starting a paper trail of evidence to show police or even attorneys, if necessary.

There is so much more one can do to prevent and combat these tactics before they happen to YOUR kid. Cyberslammed will show in depth how to do this, in a logical step-by-step fashion.

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