Cyberbullies: Cleverer Than Your Average Bully

Typically, when most of us think about cyberbullying, we think about one person (usually a child) saying something mean or disparaging to another in an online environment. But, in fact, cyberbullies can and do rely on more than just words to harass and hound another child. Kids can be quite clever in what I call the Cyberbully Variations.

Not too long ago, I was showing a group of students how easy it would be for me to find their personal profiles on social networks like Xanga and Facebook, two popular sites at that school. After surfing for a few minutes, I wound up on the profile page of a girl in the class. Let's just say her profile on that site was not the sort of profile her parents might want the world to see. A look of panic and horror swept across her face as she insisted that it wasn't her profile. It turns out that she didn't even have a social network profile. She'd been bullied by kids who took on her identity and created a mean-spirited profile page.

There are other variations on the theme. Kids will, for example:

• Create an online social group called "The Sally Haters" or the "Anti-Sam" club.
• Sign up another kid up to receive solicitations and/or pornography.
• Create a fake web page and invite comments (the high tech equivalent of "for a good time call Sally").
• Create a voting page for the "ugliest," "stupidest," or "biggest whore" in the school.
• Send messages that divulge information, true or untrue, about another child—their sexual orientation, substance issues, etc.
  

Most of these are meant to be nothing more than common pranks, the high tech equivalent of mean-spirited things like phony phone calls that were so popular in my day. But when you combine pranks with the high-speed ferocity of the Internet, you've got a recipe for cyberbullying.

Some good sources that talk about what you can do about cyberbullying include:

• Cyberbullying;
• A Brief Cyberbullying Guide for Parents; and
• Stop Cyberbullying.