State to Tackle Cyberbullying, Sexting Among Kids
Monday, August 02, 2010
Cyberbullying, online threatening, and sexting are becoming more widespread and deadlier than ever - and with the start of school around the corner, state lawmakers are taking new steps to stop it.
Starting this fall, a state Senate commission will be holding meetings at schools around the state, warning parents, educators, and others of the dangers of online harassment and teasing. By December, the commission will recommend a new law with tougher penalties for teenagers and children who cyberbully their schoolmates, according to state Sen. John Tassoni, D-Smithfield (pictured right), who has led the effort to address the issue.
“We need to change, because I don’t think there’s enough teeth in the law to prevent this from happening,” Tassoni said. “We need to put in place definitive rules, fines, and regulations, and, if need be, prison terms.”
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Cyberbullying is one of the fastest growing problems in schools, Tassoni said. In 2000, just nine percent of children ages 10 to 17 had experienced some form of online bullying. Fast forward to 2008, when 50 percent had been exposed to it, according to a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The trend is driven by the increasing numbers of children who are online or have cell phones at earlier ages, according to Chris Caron, who runs TalkWorks, an anti-bullying program in Rhode Island elementary and middle schools. Just three to four years ago, she said very few of the kids in the classes she visited said they spent time in the evenings on the computer or texting on a cell phone. This year, she said virtually all the kids she visited were.
The term cyberbullying refers to everything from harassing or teasing other students online to spreading false rumors about them to sending text messages with sexually explicit photos of someone else. Because of its anonymous and impersonal nature, Caron said this form of bullying can be far more brutal than it would be in a traditional school setting. “It’s easier to do it because you don’t have face-to-face contact,” Caron said.
Besides the emotional toll cyberbullying can take on its victims, Caron said it can affect their ability to learn. “When you go to school and you’re nervous about kids teasing you day after day or stealing you’re lunch money day after day or sending you online messages at night, you don’t want to do your math or memorize your spelling,” she said.
But cyberbullying can have far more serious—and deadly—consequences. Last January, a freshman girl at South Hadley High School in Massachusetts committed suicide after months of threatening and harassment—much of it through text messages and on Facebook.
Other similar incidents have made the headlines in recent years. In 2006, a 13-year-old Missouri girl killed herself after a friend harassed her through a fake profile on MySpace and three years before that, a 13-year-old Vermont boy took his life after being bullied online.
Searching for Solutions
Rhode Island lawmakers and educators are working hard to make sure similar tragedies do not strike here. Under current law, Tassoni said cyberbullying is treated as a nuisance in truancy court. He says he realized it needed to be changed after continuing to receive complaints about cyberbullying from parents.
Tassoni says the state needs to give more guidelines to judges—and possibly institute tougher penalties for cyberbullies, raising their behavior to the level of a misdemeanor or felony offense. Tassoni, who has a grown daughter, said he could only imagine how he would react as a father if she had experienced cyberbullying in school. “If someone was bullying her to commit suicide then I would want him punished as a criminal,” he said.
The state Senate commission will include three state senators, three schools superintendents, one public and one private high school teacher, as well as representatives from TalkWorks, the state police, and the state Family Court. It will hold its first meeting at the Statehouse this month and then travel around the state. Meetings are planned in Smithfield and Newport and schools in Providence and Cranston are other possible locations, according to Tassoni.
In the meantime, programs like TalkWorks, which mostly targets students from the third to fifth grade, have proven effective in combating cyberbullying, according to Caron. She said the program gets the message across to students through plays featuring local actors as well as role playing involving the students themselves.
In one skit, a student sends an e-mail to the rest of the class one night declaring the next day to be “Hate Nicole Day”—referring to one of the fictitious characters in the skit. “When we do this, you can hear a pin drop,” Caron said. “They can all relate to this.”
She said the plays help students make the connection between online taunts and teasing and the real-world consequences they have. “Just like we have the ‘Golden Rule’ at school, shouldn’t we have the ‘Golden Rule’ online?” she said.
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