It isn't surprising when kids bully one another on the
school playground for lunch money and entertainment, but now millions of
children are using the internet as a new hunting ground to torment one
another. Internet users ranging from kids who are five years up old up to
teenagers now face a growing threat of being tormented online, and the problem
is quickly spiraling out of control, internet safety firms report.
"Cyber-bullying is when one child or teen targets another for
embarrassment, humiliation, fear, blackmail. Something designed to hurt the
other using an interactive technology," Security, privacy and cyberspace
lawyer Parry Aftab, who also operates the WiredSafety organization.
"That's made a big difference because kids have learned that they can use
the internet as a weapon."
Aside from the occasional virtual world account hijacking that kids seem to
enjoy carrying out on a fellow user's MySpace account, one in five
children between the ages of five and 15 admit to cyber bullying while using social
networking site. On average, one in five children openly admitted to
tormenting someone their own age while using a virtual world or social
networking web site.
A report compiled by the research firm Garlik indicates one in three children
tried online bullying for fun while one in seven said they did it because
taunting over the Internet is safer and easier than doing so in real life.
"Young people see the internet as a new
playground with no rules where no-one knows who they are. If you put
children in a playground with no rules than you will get this kind of thing
going on," said Tom Ilube, Garlik chief executive.
Social networking site Bebo is attempting to battle back against online bullies
after
a teenager hung himself because he was tormented for liking "emo"
music. The 13-year old child from the United Kingdom was abused for
months before finally committing suicide -- his parents learned of the cyber
attacks after checking his Bebo account. Sam Leeson's suicide led Bebo to
work with several mental health and social health organizations to help create
guidelines to better protect children from cyber bullying, and help them if
they have been bullied.
Cyber bullying allows kids to not only attack one another anonymously, but the
children who likely wouldn't be able to bully others at school are given the
opportunity to turn the tables and use the Internet to assault each other.
Schools across the country are beginning to launch programs to educate their
students about online safety and the threat of possible bullying from
peers. Parents also are being warned that cyber bullying is a serious
problem that simply isn't harmless fun, and it should be stopped immediately
when discovered.
For parents who want to help protect their younger children from possible
bullying, sites such as KidZui offer more than 600,00 different web sites that
are viewed and approved by volunteer parents and teachers. There are no
built-in e-mail, chat rooms or instant messengers, which means the children
will not be able to openly communicate with one another. KidZui users can
have friend lists where they are able to show each other different web sites,
but cannot communicate.