• Home
  • Buy the Book
  • More ebooks
  • Reviews
  • Ethel Is Hot LOL
  • Free resources
    • For Educators
  • Hot Topics blog
  • News & Press
  • About Us
  • Contact

New cyberbullying app 'After School' rates teens' sexuality, posts nudes

2/16/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
Photo courtesy Post Register.com
Fitting that on Valentine's Day, an Idaho newspaper Post Register reporting on a Times-News story revealed a new app teens are downloading to their phones called 'After School.'

As we always say: same tactics: different technology. After School is an anonymous Rating Site, which allows users to make lewd sexual comparisons about their classmates with zero consequences. According to the story, the "...widespread use of the After School app has left a vicious mark of bullying in its wake — along with a lot of sex talk that includes the names of students and educators."

Posts on After School message boards tied to other south-central Idaho schools have included nude photos of students, derogatory comments about appearance, name calling and comments about students’ body parts."

If you are a parent, you should already be having a conversation about what apps are unacceptable to download with your teen, especially if you own their phone. Click here on expert advice on how to have The Conversation as well as smart tools to prevent cyberbullying on your teen's phone.

Schools and parents need to know if they try to download the app, they will find it requires student verification in the form of a student identification card or driver’s license. The app logs in the student through his or her Facebook account, which makes deleting it more difficult.

If you need to know how a Rating Site occurs (one of our six most common cyberbullying tactics, buy our Parent's Guide To A Rating Site on Kindle or purchase a softcover copy of Cyberslammed, our award-winning cyberbullying book.


0 Comments

New Twitter poll feature used as a cyberbullying Rating Site

11/18/2015

0 Comments

 
You'd think after all this time, app and feature designers would consider how the latest tool they're promoting could be used to cyberbully, wouldn't you?
That's what Twitter is now realizing after rolling out a new feature that allows users to post poll questions.

Of course teenagers will use it to negatively rate each other. A Utah high school just figured that out when they discovered tweets with the poll feature asking people to rate the body parts of specific students, vote on an individual student's perceived level of sexual activity, or comment on the status of their relationships with other students. Read the whole story here.

For those who aren't familiar with this tactic, it's called a Rating Site, one of the six tactics listed in our cyberbullying prevention book, Cyberslammed. It's a common tactic to negatively rate, denounce or judge someone publicly. 

Said one of the teens in the story: "This isn't just kids being kids," Campbell said. "This is kids being mean. You can see kids getting revenge on other kids through the polls.
"It's definitely kids you go to school with," she added, "because it's rumors and it's everyone's deepest darkest secrets."


Know what to do when a group of people use Instagram, Facebook or  Internet polls to upload someone's photo and get bystanders to vote for their "ugliest," "fattest," "dumbest" peers? Our  Parent's Guide To A Rating Website is available on Kindle for $2.99. Buy here.

Or get up to speed on five other cyberbullying tactics along with this tactic in our award-winning book Cyberslammed.




0 Comments

Rating Site tactic targets girls' physical attractiveness

11/24/2014

0 Comments

 
Indiana school officials just learned what a cyberbullying Rating Site is this week. For the uninitiated, a Rating Site is when someone uploads a photo of the target and gets bystanders to vote on the victim's physical attractiveness.
Obviously this can go very badly, very quickly.

The authorities call it "Bracket Style Ranking System" and it can be very damaging to a girl's sense of worth to be so callously objectified and abused.

According to Fox.59.com, Zionsville senior Grace Labuzan said,
“A lot of girls were offended by this. I don`t know how they find it a joke. I`ve been bullied before, I want to speak out for those that are too afraid or too quiet to speak out against it because it is wrong."

Parents and educators, this is just the latest cyberbullying tactic that is essentially war on women and girls. Learn how to identify it, then learn how to fight it.


Know what to do when a group of people use Instagram, Facebook or  Internet polls to upload someone's photo and get bystanders to vote for their "ugliest," "fattest," "dumbest" peers? Our new Parent's Guide To A Rating Website is available on Kindle for $.99
. Buy here



0 Comments

Streetchat: the latest anonymous messaging app to cyberbully

9/3/2014

0 Comments

 
Streetchat (go to link) is a new anonymous messaging app from Apple that sprang up over the summer as the latest tool kids can use to cyberbully. The free app on iTunes for iPhones, iPads and iPods, is proudly described this way: "Streetchat is an anonymous bulletin board to post photos to the people in your school. It is a fast reliable way to share your thoughts, gossip and talk about things around you."

After all the vicious cyberbullying that has come out of past anonymous phone apps (some of which have contributed to teen suicide), you gotta love that adult developers are still encouraging teens to
engage in malicious gossip, don't you?

If there is anything anonymous message app developers have learned from Secret, Whisper, and Ask.fm, it's that this tool can--and always will be--abused.

It's not even the first day of school yet and already, stories are coming out that this app is being misused to cyberbully in schools as well as make anonymous real-life threats.


One of the ways Streetchat can cyberbully is to set up an anonymous platform to launch a Rating Site tactic, i.e.
to negatively rate, denounce or judge someone.

Media reports often give the impression that kids flock to these kind of apps, but as this one teen reviewer of the app exemplifies, teens, themselves may be sick of developers monetizing their relationship conflicts.


* This app is sickening...      
by Audrey Chaffin

This is so terrible...what kind of people are you to make an app for kids to make fun of other kids in their school?! Maybe that wasn't the original intention, but it is certainly happening. It's so sad to see things that encourage bullying. I know in your rules it says that bullying is not allowed, but that's clearly not monitored very well. I saw plenty of kids making fun of specific kids in the school...one post asking commenters to list the fattest girl in school. I can only imagine how upset I would be if I was one of the kids being made fun of for everyone to see... This could seriously lead to kids committing suicide or cutting themselves over what people say about them and it probably will. There is no need for an easy way to view what everyone at your school thinks about you. This is going to hurt so many poor kids' feelings and get everyone mad at each other. For the sake of teens feeling happy with whom they are, please remove this app.

To be prepared this school year how cyberbullying apps work along with other cyberbullying tactics, buy Cyberslammed $12.50 for your school or home.



0 Comments

The Allure And Danger of Posting Selfies Online

2/3/2014

0 Comments

 

The Allure and Danger of Posting Selfies Online is the second video in our webinar series to help give you a better understanding of Internet Safety and Cyberbullying.  Kay Stephens, co-author of Cyberslammed, tells us some things to consider before posting a selfie, ways that they are being used to cyberbully and how you can help protect your teen.

Click here to watch the 5 min webinar.  

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

0 Comments

Exposing 'Hos' on Instagram, the latest Rating Site trend

1/23/2014

1 Comment

 
Picture
Over the last six months, experts have noticed a shift in the way teens are communicating. Tired of of the transparency and parental monitoring of Facebook, many are searching for more anonymous alternatives and are gravitating toward social networking sites like Whisper and Instagram.  New month, different app, that's the way it goes. Parents and teachers can't keep up. (Not surprisingly, by the time they do, that's the cue for the teens to move on.)  Instagram, a photo sharing app that can be registered under an anonymous screenname, is like an underground speakeasy. Adults aren't hip to all the hidden back rooms yet, making it a perfect app to be used as a cyberbullying tool.

Even though Instagram's Community Guidelines prohibit nudity and graphic sexual poses, within two minutes, I was able to find dozens and dozens of pages depicting drug use, slut-shaming women, and graphic, explicit nudity. (Some of these photos I don't doubt are underage, which would categorize it as child pornography).

Yes, this is where a lot of teens have found their new outlet. And to be fair, many teens simply use Instagram the way it was intended, to share photos with friends and be social. I'm not sure why Instagram allows the other photos to stay online given their Guidelines, but just earlier this month, a Napa California police department investigated an Instagram page after receiving multiple reports  that it contained “inappropriate” images of females.

The  images were posted on a page called “napahoezexxposed." Translation: Napa Hoez Exxposed-- an Instagram page dedicated to labeling certain girls and women as whores. This is a combined Sexting and Rating Site tactic where someone uploaded photos of females (allegedly without their consent) in various stages of undress (thus Sexting) with the motive to slut-shame these girls by allowing commenters to rate them (thus a Rating Site). I've seen multiple versions of the so-called "Exposing Hos" tactic on Facebook and Twitter, but, apparently Instagram is the new technological vehicle for the same type of behavior. 

Time Magazine's recent article "What Boys Want" by Rosalind  Wiseman recently featured a fascinating article on why today's teens engage in Sexting, even when they know of the steep risks. The takeway I got from this article is that with this digital generation so used to the casual release of Kim Kardashian-type of sex tapes, snapping a nude pic or photographing a sexually explicit pose isn't as a big deal to this generation as it should be.  Certain teens
(particularly those with low-self esteem) tend to have a careless regard for their own image and reputation and just don't think about the consequences to such actions.  When sending a nude photo to a someone is the only way you'll get his/her attention or keep his/her attraction, there are bigger issues here than the actual photo. The same goes for teens who request the photos as status symbols and insurance (in case of being rejected.)

Regardless, you can now see how the
stage has been set for using these photos as cyberbullying currency. With teenage girls, we must keep the conversation going about alternatives to Sexting, not from a prudish standpoint, but from a reputation-destroying-forever-online standpoint. No girl wants a private "for your eyes only" photo to go virally, embarrassingly public. But, as statistics show,  it inevitably will.  And today, when a lapse in judgment results in being branded a whore on the Internet for all to comment on and judge, this is the time to talk to that teen in your life about that secret photo on his/her phone they hope you'll never find out about.


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


1 Comment

Accidental cyberbullying and Instagram: How a Rating Site Happens

9/3/2013

0 Comments

 
A Huffington Post article on accidental bullying from author Sue Scheff interviewing iKeepSafe's Katie Greer adds a little more nuance to what has seemingly been a lot of black and white discussion on cyberbullying this past year. Owing to the fact that we're all human and make newbie Internet mistakes (particularly when you're in middle school) this article is well worth the read.

However, I deal with specific instances of cyberbullying and Greer used a very good example of what we, the authors of Cyberslammed define as a "Rating Site"-- when someone uploads a photo to Facebook, Instagram, Vine or a site like "Hot Or Not" and polls others to rate the person in the photo as the fattest, ugliest etc.


Greer said:
"The most common story I get is centered around these beauty pageants (or other like-contests/polls) that are happening all over social networking sites such as Instagram or Ask.fm. Kids know these contests/polls are riddled with negativity and admit to seeing some pretty nasty ones, so many say they have created ones with the intent to make their friends feel good about themselves. One group of 7th graders told me that a contest was set up on Instagram pinning 4 girls against each other, asking people to tag the ugliest of the four. Their friend received the most tags in this mean contest, so they decided to set up one with a positive tone, asking people to vote for and tag the prettiest. All these girls banded together to get their friend the most votes -- not realizing in the process they were unintentionally hurting the three others involved in this contest."

So what is happening is, as kids are flocking to Instagram, Snapchat, Vine and Twitter to get away from the hovering parents on Facebook, they are using the same tactics, but on different platforms. The Rating Site on Instagram pits someone as the "ugliest." We've seen that before. What Greer is talking about is sort of a Reverse Rating Site, where the girls were trying to balance the wrongs by setting up a poll on Instagram to rate the prettiest girl--not realizing that by doing so, the unspoken assumption was that the other three were not pretty.

Anyway, yes, that is accidental. Is it cyberbullying? Some who don't know the whole story would definitely see it that way. That's why we need to approach every cyberbullying situation with an open mind and a willingness to gather ALL the various perspectives and facts. It's not black and white--never was, and by educating yourselves on this ever-shifting landscape, you will be educating the kids in your life who may not always understand the difference.


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

0 Comments

Target of Two Tactics Fights Back And Inspires Others

9/21/2012

0 Comments

 
A really interesting podcast from Flipswitch lets Kira, an Australian high schooler  with bipolar condition talk about what she suffered at the hands of cyberbullies and how she actually fought back.
At the 5:20 mark she recounts a situation where she was attacked on a Haters' Club made on a Facebook group, (which she was able to get taken down) and a Rating Site on Formspring, a social media site that allows anonymous opinions to be posted. She left Formspring's community at that point. At the 6:25 mark Kira tells teens these are several ways to fight back against cyberbullies. Her advice:

1. Print out copies of every cyberbullying comment or incident before it gets deleted. This is saved evidence for the police if need be.

2. Make your Facebook privacy settings only viewable to see your name, your country and your profile picture. Don't give cyberbullies access to information that can use against you.

3. Avoid social networking sites that don't protect your privacy --or--to echo another comment she made, avoid sites that only allow anonymous posters (like Formspring).

4. Be friends with your delete button. In other words, she says, delete any person from your social networking site who ever belittles you, insults you or is mean in any way, even if you consider them friends. Real friends don't behave this way online.

Interestingly, her comment on what schools are doing about bullying/cyberbullying echos a lot of what I've heard from American kids. That schools don't take it seriously; that consequences are rarely strong enough to deter a bully and that this does nothing to encourage bystanders to stand up for a target or report it.

Finally, her last comment about teaching kids resilience is more important than teaching prevention has a bit of a sad ring to it. In the real world, prevention won't stop them all. In the end, you have to be your own best friend and stick up for yourself. Never believe what they say about you is true.


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
0 Comments

Disparaging Rating Website: '509 Hoes' Targets Teen Girls

9/7/2012

0 Comments

 
Of course the perpetrator is anonymous. Why would anyone have the guts to put their name on this?

A cyberbully in Washington created a Rating Website called '509 Hoes Exposed' through a Facebook page posting pictures of girls without their permission. The purpose of a Rating Website is to denigrate someone's image online or unfavorably compare to another person's image. This perpetrator did just that, setting them up for critiques and suggesting they were promiscuous.

Though police got the first Rating Site taken down, the culprit set another one up just as fast--something police are now trying to get to the bottom of by getting a subpeona to find out the culprit's IP address.

Talk to your daughters about NOT posting any suggestive or sexy photos anywhere online--even privately to friends.  In this Internet age-everything can be used against them.

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
0 Comments

Student's Rating Website just like Mark Zuckerberg's!

5/30/2012

0 Comments

 
An Illinois student once already expelled for rating 50 girls on Facebook with humiliating comments about their looks and alleged promiscuity did it again. .  . and likely got the same punishment. But in this instance, two of the girls who were targets of this Rating Website tactic spoke up--not just to the school administration, but to the media. Read the whole story here.

It's probably not ironic that the bully chose to use Facebook as his technological medium. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, started his career by creating a Rating Website called Facemash, (which has now been recreated once again) Once, again, the popularity and subsequent power of this tactic relied on how many bystanders played the role of the bully's supported.

"Hundreds of students cheered him on,'" Haley Rea told local news network CBS 2.

"They didn't see the fundamental wrong, and the sexism and racism of it, and the misogyny of it," Julia Levy added.

More than ever, teach your students and teens the potential pitfalls of posting certain photos of themselves online. Yes, sharing photos for fun with friends is more than not, a fun, innocent pasttime, but teens always have to remember that every photo can be used against them online--especially in the case of a Rating Website.  Tools such as Google+'s "Find My Face" feature--an opt-in feature that allows friends to tag one's photos and Facebook's "tag" feature are the latest examples of facial recognition technology creeping closer to the horizon than ever.  Do a photo inventory with your teens in class or at home each month to clear out the ones that can be misused and abused.


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
0 Comments

Megan Meier: Anatomy of Multiple Cyberbullying Tactics

5/15/2012

0 Comments

 
Whenever we write about the kids who have fallen victim to the most malicious forms of cyberbullying, it's easy to get emotional and very angry.

But
to help other victimized teens find the strength to make a different choice, we have to stay focused and study what went wrong. If you don't already know  Megan's story, click here.  We wrote to Megan's mother, Tina, asking for her permission to include the story of Megan's Imposter Profile in our Introduction to Cyberslammed. She wrote back, granting us permission, adding, "My hope is that through the continued awareness from people around the world that we will help children and their families."

So to honor Megan, we will use this space to talk strategically about what tactics were used and how to identify and avoid them.

On The Internet, no one is exactly who they appear to be. That is Lesson #1 when it comes to your kids.  We're not just talking "stranger-danger"--we're talking about enemies who pose as friends. You have to train your kids to be wary at a young age when it comes to any online communication. That will be their first line of defense when someone tries to befriend them on the 'Net on MySpace, Facebook, Bebo or any other social networking website. Tina was actually monitoring Megan's profile, had all her passwords and knew that she was talking with a boy, "Josh Evans." In Megan's case, she immediately trusted that "Josh" who befriended her was real. After all: there was his photo, his bio, his preferences. And he had a line that was sure to melt the heart of a 13-year-old girl.

"when i was 7 my dad left me and my mom and my older brother and my newborn brother 3 boys god i know poor mom yeah she had such a hard time when we were younger finding work to pay for us after he left."

Yet, all of this was fiction, set up by Tina Meier's neighbor, Lori Drew. Yes, an adult had set up this Imposter Profile with the intent to deceive a 13-year-old girl because her daughter had had a falling out with Megan. As noted on the Megan Meier Foundation's website, Drew set up the Imposter Profile to find out what Megan might be saying about her daughter.

As the story goes, one day, "Megan received a puzzling and disturbing message from Josh. Tina recalls that it said: 'I don't know if I want to be friends with you anymore because I've heard that you are not very nice to your friends.' "

From there, the Imposter Profile morphed into multiple cyberbullying tactics, as they so often do. Next, "Josh" shared some of Megan's private messages with a larger group of bystanders. There is not a name for this tactic (yet), but sharing private messages with an unintended third party as a way to incriminate the target seems to be a preferred method of teens who may not even realize it is cyberbullying. According to a 2010 study done by authors Dr. Justin Patchin and Dr. Sameer Hinduja of the Cyberbullying Research Center, "When asked about specific types of cyberbullying in the previous 30 days, mean or hurtful comments (13.7%) and rumors spread (12.9%) online continue to be among the most commonly-cited.

Lesson #2 Teach your kids never to reveal any personal or sensitive information online. Do not gossip online or share someone else's private messages even with people they know and trust. Anything electronic is proof and can be misused very badly against the poster in a way he/she never envisioned.

Next, the bystander group whose MySpace accounts were linked to the fictitious "Josh" account began to attack Megan online. The cyberbullying tactics turned to a Digital Pile On. This is when a ringleader gets his or her minions to "pile on" the target with mean, hurtful comments. Within this tactic, there was yet another sub-tactic: the followers were posting bulletins about Megan through MySpace, which are considered "fun online surveys",  but these survey topics were designed to be cruel and ranged from: "Megan Meier is a slut" (subtactic: "slut-shaming") to  "Megan Meier is fat." This subtactic is very similar to a Rating Website, outlined in Cyberslammed as well.

As the Digital Pile On progressed, Megan tried to defend herself online using vulgar language, unwittingly opening herself up to more cyberbullying.


Lesson #3: Don't Want Another Attack? Don't Fire Back. Experts consistently say the worst thing a target can do is to react with anger online. It is exactly the reaction the ringleader and his/her minions are looking for and it opens the way for harsher attacks. The best thing one can do is immediately get offline and put together a strategy to address the situation with adults.

The day Megan died, her father found what he believed to be the final message Megan saw, but it couldn't be retrieved from her hard drive. To the best of his recollection it said, "Everybody in O'Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you."

To read more of this convoluted case, including its legal outcomes and how this case became the foundation for a new law, click here.

The last thing we will say about this: In the age of new technological tools and fads, it is increasingly difficult to shield our teens from harmful intent online. So we must prepare them to be vigilant about their own safety, cautious about what they choose to reveal and to whom, strategic in the way they (as well as the parents) choose to resolve the conflict  and lastly, resilient in the face of electronic defamation and harassment.


Know what to do a group viciously gangs up on one person through Facebook, Twitter, Ask.fm, a group chat, comments or Instant Messaging.? Our new Parent's Guide To A Digital Pile On is now available on Kindle for $2.99.
$2.99 on Kindle
0 Comments
    Picture

    Cyberslammed
    Hot Topics

    Cyberbullying tactics in the news, expert advice from contributors and prevention tips for parents, educators and kids.

    RSS Feed


    Blog Comment Rules

    All comments are pre-screened before posting. Anonymous comments will not be allowed. Keep it civil and on topic. No harassing or personal attacks; even if you disagree with something, please do it respectfully.

    Categories

    All
    After School App
    Anonymous Apps
    Anxiety
    Ask.fm
    Bulletins
    Burn Book
    Cell Phones/smart Phones
    Cyberbullying Policies
    Digital Pile On
    Ethel Is Hot (LOL)
    Expert Contributors
    Facebook
    Formspring
    Funstagram
    "Go Kill Yourself"
    Google+
    Hater's Club
    Homophobic Cyberbullying
    Identifying Cyberbullies
    Imposter Profile
    Instagram
    Kik Messenger
    Myspace
    Parent Contracts
    Rating Website
    Sexting
    Slut Shaming
    Slut-shaming
    Snapchat
    Streetchat
    Text Bombing
    Tween Novels
    Twitter
    Videojacking
    Whisper
    Yelp
    Youtube
    Zoom

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    February 2021
    October 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    July 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    November 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    July 2013
    February 2013
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012