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

Here's kind of a light-hearted example of a Videojacking and you can see why it's funny. A woman does a sleep walk dance; her son records it, puts it up on YouTube without her knowledge and then shows it to her.

The question is: if it were you, would you want the entire world to be watching this? It's gone viral on CNN. The mother looks amused about it and the son doesn't look as though he's doing this out of any malice--it's just funny to him. If she didn't want it up there, she could ask him to take it down. But once it goes viral, there is no "taking it down." It's endlessly shared online.

This is the problem with our technology trigger-finger culture. Putting up video without someone's knowledge or approval has become the common course of action, rather than the considerate choice, which would be to think first about how exposing someone so publicly might hurt his/her reputation - or provide fodder for more online ridicule. 

Ask your kids/students how they would feel if someone did this to them. Ask them if video like this could be used against them in any way? By their enemies? Ex-friends? Ex-relationships?

Any time you contribute anything to the Internet about someone else, it adds to their digital footprint. And some people do not wish to be so exposed at the expense of a joke.

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