decorahnews.com special report: Bullying goes digital

When you think about bullying, you probably think about elementary school students on a playground or perhaps middle school girls making catty remarks.

But, as is the case with so much of modern life, bullying is now going digital.  This generation of teenagers socializes through their digital devices such as smartphones and tablets.  As a result, a growing number of complaints about bullying revolve around Twitter feeds or Facebook posts instead of playground punches.

School administrators are struggling to catch up with a constantly-changing situation.  Decorah High School Activities Director Adam Riley says the high school is trying to educate students about what is--and isn't--acceptable digital behavior.  The problem, says Riley, is that kids don't think about the impact their on-line behavior will have.

Decorah High School principal Kim Sheppard agrees, saying that students don't realize how permanent their on-line presence is.  Pictures and words shared in the digital world tend to remain there forever and, as Sheppard notes, "There's a whole world out there (paying attention)."

That's why school administrators are determined to handle on-line bullying.  As Riley notes, there is no way to determine the tone of an on-line message--whether it was intended as a joke or as a way to hurt someone.  So comments about someone's race, gender, sexual orientation or other factors that some might think are just jokes have to be taken seriously.

According to Social Shield, a maker of Internet software designed to protect kids, "Cyberbullying or internet bullying is a form of bullying which involves the use of email, cell phone and pager text messages, instant messaging, camera phones, and/or defamatory blogs to support repeated hostile behavior by an individual or group towards others with the intent to harm.  Kids can send each other hurtful and nasty messages, spread rumors or compromising sexual pictures online, hijack others personal information and post it for all to see, and impersonate their target and send horrible, mean messages to others who believe their friend is the cyberbully."

Such behavior is far from common in the Decorah School District and statewide, but it does occur.  The Decorah School District reported 12 overall bullying incidents during the 2012-2013 school year--five of which were judged to be violations of the law.  Statewide there were over 5,000 bullying incidents during the 2012-2013 school year, of which just under half were substantiated as violations of the state's anti-bullying law.

Decorah High School investigated a cyber-bullying situation earlier this year and administrators are working hard to education students and parents alike about the issue.

decorahnews.com will post a number of stories during the next three weeks about cyber-bullying (an other bullying) in an effort to educate the public about this issue.