This parent guide provides information about cyberbullying, and includes practical tips on how to help prevent or reduce the impact of cyberbullying, what you should do if your child is targeted or if your child is cyberbullying someone, and how you can help your child stand up to cyberbullying.
How big a problem is cyberbullying? To judge by media coverage, which frequently focuses on the most sensational and extreme cases, it’s an epidemic, and schools and legislators have often responded with heavy-handed measures. Students, on the other hand, are more likely to say that cyberbullying is less of an issue than adults perceive it to be – though even they, in many cases, overestimate how common it actually is. MediaSmarts’ report Cyberbullying: Dealing with Online Meanness, Cruelty and Threats, the third in a series of reports based on data from our Young Canadians in a Wired World survey, suggests that so far as Canadian youth are concerned the answer is somewhere in between, presenting a portrait of online conflict that demands more nuanced, contextualized and evidence-based responses.
Cyberbullying can be addressed under civil law or criminal law, based on the situation.
Meet Sasha. At age 8, she's a real social butterfly, both online and off, and is very concerned with how the world sees her: she spends a lot of time making sure she looks good in photos online but doesn't always think twice about who might see them. Violet is Sasha's older sister and her polar opposite: she's a hardcore gamer, and just as tough as her Level 65 Barbarian. Though she despairs of her sister sometimes, she's also fiercely protective of her and will unleash her considerable wrath on anyone she thinks is picking on Sasha.
Level: Grade K to 3
About the Author: Matthew Johnson, Director of Education, MediaSmarts.
Duration: 10-15 minutes per activity
This lesson is part of USE, UNDERSTAND & ENGAGE: A Digital Media Literacy Framework for Canadian Schools.
On February 25, we’ll be celebrating Pink Shirt Day – a day dedicated to raising awareness around bullying, giving young people the tools they need to stand up to bullies and teaching them how to step in when they see it happening. To help you mark the day, we’ve put together a list of resources.
Despite their enthusiastic participation in social media, it’s a mistake to think that young people don’t care about privacy. MediaSmarts’ 2014 study Young Canadians in a Wired World, which surveyed over 5,000 students across Canada on their experiences with and attitudes towards digital media, found that they do have very strong feelings about their privacy, and take significant steps to control it.