Cyberbullying is on the Rise. Bullies have moved off the playground and onto the internet. As technology usage among teens continues to grow, malicious teens have moved their bullying activities to the web.
As of 2013:
- 93% of teens are online
- More than 78% of U.S. teens own a smartphone device or their own computer
- Of those teens, 80% are active on one or more social media sites
- 88% of social media-using teens have witnessed other people be mean or cruel on social network sites
- 15% of social media-using teens say they have been the target of online meanness
- 13% have felt nervous about going to school the next day
Where can this type of harassment lead?
- 25% of social media teens have had an experience on a social network site that resulted in a face-to-face argument or confrontation with someone
- 90% of social media-using teens who have witnessed online cruelty say they have ignored mean behavior on social media, and more than a third (35%) have done this frequently
- Two-thirds of teens who have witnessed online cruelty have also witnessed others joining in – and 21% say they have also joined in the harassment
Even though internet, cell phone, and social media access will continue to grow among teens, bullying does not have to follow that increasing trend. Cyberbullying and its results can be monitored and prevented.
How to Detect and Prevent Cyberbullying in Schools
Proactive and Reactive Solutions
There are two key approaches to prevent cyberbullying: One is reactive; the other is proactive. By implementing both solutions your organization will have a dual-layer approach to assure that cyberbullying is stopped in its tracks. Both are system level applications that schools, districts and administrators should consider implementing.
Proactive – Social Media Monitoring and Keyword Scanning
Social media monitoring helps prevents inappropriate social media posts to student, teacher, staff or your school’s social media accounts. With social media monitoring, you can setup alerts to notify adminstrators for keywords, questions, or personal information. This monitoring will allow you to identify potentially harmful posts and address them as needed. This gives you the ability to prevent cyberbullying and develop strategies to deal with harmful situations.
Email Keyword Scanning helps you curb cyberbullying, sexual harassment, and other inappropriate communication by flagging associated keywords. This enables you to identify and scan for keywords such as gun, kill, maim, destroy, shoot, plot, and other illicit or harmful terms. These messages are flagged so that a potentially harmful situation can be defused before it creates an incident, disaster, or tragedy.
Reactive – Social Media and Mobile Device Archiving
Social media archiving provides you the ability to archive social media communications within your network. When students post to social media, you need the ability to archive those communications in a central database. If anything inappropriate is posted by students, teachers, or staff, you need to be able to find out about it.
Mobile device archiving provides you the ability to archive mobile communications on any device. By archiving this data, you now have a record of texts and phone call logs to give you a full picture of what was said and to whom, thus protecting you from potential litigation.
Start protecting your school and students today!
GWAVA provides a complete solution to protect your students, school, and staff from potentially harmful situations by providing detection and prevention tools including; keyword scanning, social media monitoring and archiving, and mobile archiving.
For more information about how to prevent cyberbullying and how to protect your students and school with GWAVA, visit www.GWAVA.com
