This week’s topic of cyberbullying and personal responsibility is an important one in the discussion of the digital age. While technology makes it easy for people to communicate and share ideas, it also opens up its users to invasions of privacy and potentially negative situations.
I read this article by Lesli Roterberg about the importance of beginning internet safety education at a younger age, before it is too late. Roterberg cites a statistic that only ten percent of cyberbullied children tell their parents that anything is going on. I would assume that many children tell no one, not even a friend, because of embarrassment or shame about what is being done to them. While prevention is important, it is also necessary for parents to monitor their children’s internet activity and to provide support so that children won’t be too afraid to ask for help.
I came across this series of videos and the first one, “Feathers in the Wind,” struck a chord with me. I’d heard this parable before, that spreading gossip is like releasing feathers and it is impossible to collect the feathers or right the wrong, but I think it is a lesson that children and teenagers need to be reminded of from time to time. While this applies to spreading rumors both on and off the internet, I think it is always easier to spread untrue information online. Someone can easily forward or copy and paste the “feathers” until they are far out of reach.
1 comments:
The videos are terrific...I will show to my students this week the video about the feathers in the wind. Students have difficulty in relating a common occurance such as cyberbullying with the pain that it can cause. Thanks for the insight.
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