Using computer technology to address the problem of cyberbullying

Historically, bullying has been an accepted part of adolescence. With key demographic changes in the United States and the evolution of information and communication technologies, more children are falling prey to a new form of bullying. School leaders, policymakers, and politicians are creating laws such as Maryland's Grace's Law to combat the digital epidemic of cyberbullying. Unfortunately, many teachers and school administrators are left with the burden of implementing cyberbullying laws without trying to distinguish the cause and take action to prevent it. School systems must develop methods for recording cyberbullying incidents to produce accurate data results. Teachers, school leaders, lawmakers, and government officials must fund and implement cyberethics programs in schools to help students develop into responsible, compassionate global digital citizens. Neblett: this list of random names could be a list of family members, friends, or students in any school, in any district, in any part of the world. The individuals on this list of names have one major thing in common: they were teenage victims of cyberbullying and committed suicide because of the psychic trauma caused by relentless torment and ridicule. The threats and implications of cyberbullying jeopardize the safety and well being of today's digital generation.

Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth, 2011

Bullying has long been of concern to school officials and parents alike. Bullying, which is a type of aggressive behavior, has now entered the electronic age in the form of cyberbullying (e.g., e-mails, text messages, profile sites). Cyberbullying is especially insidious because it affords a measure of anonymity and the opportunity to reach a much larger number of victims without a significant threat of punishment. In this article, the authors discuss efforts to combat cyberbullying that include prevention and intervention programs at the community, school, and family levels. The authors point out that the majority of U.S. states have written legislation to address bullying and cyberbullying and that many schools have established policies that prohibit electronic bullying and developed consequences for doing so. Last, the authors discuss a number of antibullying curricula and mediated programs, software packages, and intervention strategies for the school and home designed to help protect children and adolescents from being targets of cyberbullying.

With the development of information and communication technology, easy access to internet and portable electronic devices, adverse effects of these blessings have also aggravated. This article tries to explain problems with the definition of cyberbullying, the issues raised and interventions to eradicate them. Recommendations are also provided to tackle this social norm. Even though research on cyberbullying has increased in recent years, countless constraints remain that need to be addressed in future research.

Social Media and the Transformation of Interaction in Society, 2015

The Internet is a really wide, intriguing world, difficult to penetrate in depth, rich with dissimulations, full of useful and also evil things, that are continuously changing. Cyberbullying represents an actual risk, especially for the online generation which is often unable to distinguish between virtual and realreality. The first step for cyberbullying prevention is the knowledge acquisition of what cyberbullying is and how it occurs within a specific context. This is not an easy task, since cyberbullying is a complex and quite new phenomenon, so much that researchers' opinion is often divided on its definition and there isn't agreement on the extent of its diffusion. This article presents and comments some cyberbullying preventing tips, inspired by the "top ten tips" that Hinduja and Patchin suggested to educators engaged in cyberbullying prevention.

This paper explores the possibilities created by modern technologies to prevent bullying and antisocial behaviors. The live of modern generations is inseparable from the mass media and advanced ICT. In this context, anti-social and pro-social behavior of young people was shown and defined. Then, a review was made how new technologies can be used in (cyber)bullying prevention and interventions strategies. Technology-based solutions were divided into two groups: (1) preventative solutions and therefore applicable before bullying occurs and (2) reactive solutions, which are aimed at helping victim, bystanders and others to deal with bullying. Some of presented activities are an extension of the activities already known in the field of peer violence prevention from the face to face context to the online environment. The examples of technology-based solutions presented in the text have a different degree of complexity. In some cases, they boil down to one simple operation, in another they mean long-term conduct. Based on the information presented in this article, the conclusion is that new technologies may be used in raising awareness about bullying phenomenon, for developing socio-emotional skills and some bullying preventative and reactive solutions. However, these strategies need to be combined with others in a way to build a thoughtful and comprehensive program, as well as more research is needed in this area to verify their real effects.

There are various social risks tied to cyberspace. Many of them are social risks because they are cultural risks, like virtual identity construction and interaction in social networks. Toxic evils like cyberbullying and other malicious cybercrimes can give the impression that technological advances are bad and that children and youth would be better off if they did not have access to the Internet, cellular phones, etc. This is not the correct way to tackle the problem of cyberspace risks, which is an issue very insidious and increasing. Indeed, technology can be a very good thing: Internet provides useful information and represent a free window towards the world. Not only it opens up sources of knowledge to people (adolescents in particular) that might otherwise were too difficult to access, but technology also affords around easy means of establishing and maintaining social contacts. For many persons -see the field of assistive technologies -new technologies may offer powerful solutions and contribute in saving costs and creating new professions and services , as well as alternative and effective forms of citizens' participation. The Internet and related technologies have a positive impact on our life: the problem is how some people maliciously use them. Although, investigating and diffusing knowledge about their abuse can mitigate the negative effects. Considering its continuous growing, this report is focused on cyberbullying.

2020

The ever-growing and fast expanding reach of the internet, coupled with the rapid spread of information and communication technology (ICT), as well as the wide diffusion of social media globally, have presented new opportunities and challenges to online users. In fact, technology as we know it today is fraught with the good, the bad and the ugly. This technological revolution could rightly be described as a “double edged” sword, where the user is continuously balancing between risks and opportunities.

Cyberbullying has existed via social media, texting, etc. A proactive approach is necessary towards extinguishing this behavior. Over the past three decades, computers have dramatically changed our society and the face of education. The addition of mobile devices has expanded digital connectivity even more. The recent explosion and proliferation of social media sites now allows students to stay connected from anywhere, twenty-four hours a day. While these changes offer tremendous opportunities for educators, they have also opened up unprecedented opportunities for bullying. The best way to stop cyberbullying is by reporting it.

Behaviour & Information Technology, 2018

While there is an increasing flow of media stories reporting cases of cyberbullying, particularly within online social media, research efforts in the academic community are scattered over different topics across the social science and computer science academic disciplines. In this work, we explored research pertaining to cyberbullying, conducted across disciplines. We mainly sought to understand scholarly activity on intelligence techniques for the detection of cyberbullying when it occurs. Our findings suggest that the vast majority of academic contributions on cyberbullying focus on understanding the phenomenon, risk factors, and threats, with the prospect of suggesting possible protection strategies. There is less work on intelligence techniques for the detection of cyberbullying when it occurs, whilst currently deployed algorithms seem to detect the problem only up to some degree of success. The article summarizes the current trends aiming to encourage discussion and research with a new scope; we call for more research tackling the problem by leveraging statistical models and computational mechanisms geared to detect, intervene, and prevent cyberbullying. Coupling intelligence techniques with specific web technology problems can help combat this social menace. We argue that a multidisciplinary approach is needed, with expertise from human computer interaction, psychology, computer science, and sociology, for current challenges to be addressed and significant progress to be made.

Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference Innovation in Education (ICoIE 2020), 2020

Bullying, defined as the violence of any kind including verbal intimidation, frequently occurs in the school environment around the world and is most often seen among young people aged 11-13, or more broadly among middle school students. Bullying does not only occur among younger and older students, but it is a more significant phenomenon among pre-and early teenagers. In the past, bullying mostly took place among students who knew each other or at least were in the same school environment. Today, however, the existence of the online environment means that a child who tends to bully others often makes use of social media (Facebook, WhatsApp, and other application.) to intimidate his or her peers. Majorities of children in the age group most susceptible to bullying regularly use social media to interact with their friends, and they generally have access to their cell phones, tablet, or computer. It is dramatically facilitates bullying behaviour and allows the aggressor to bully other...