How Schools “stop” Cyberbullying

What is cyberbullying?

Most schools talk about how bullying must be stopped and how their students should always go to them when they are dealing with cyberbullying issues. Over my past experiences with the school system and how they chose to deal with the idea of cyberbullying, they don’t.

Within the past two years my own person experience and the experiences of other people have shown and proven that many schools chose not to deal with the problem unless the student being cyberbullied threatens to hurt themselves or worse.

In most of the instances in which the school tried to deal with the cyberbullying issues, no real action was taken.

Many times the victim gets blamed for having any social media account to begin with.  Then schools practically force the students having a conflict to become “friends” or they do nothing at all.

In one specific example, a girl admitted to cyberbullying another girl to the school officer several times, and nothing happened.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/maryland-teen-threatened-suicide-reddit-school-stop-cyber/story?id=15955549

In the ABC story, this student had to threaten her own life before the school ever decided to take any action. Many schools don’t seem to understand the emotional damage cyberbullying has on their students. For them to sit there and act as if nothing is happening seems unfair. Students suicidal thoughts and depression takes insults and hurtful comments more to heart, causing it to convert more towards self hate than anything else. Schools seem to wait until the situation becomes extreme before taking action shown in the article above.