Stopping cyber bullies starts with self Sunday, October 07, 2012 By Liz B. [ArticleImageHyperLink] Advertising Oftentimes, the enemies we cannot see are the most dangerous to us. When kids are bullied at school, administrators usually take action. This not the case when kids are bullied online. Kids come home from a long day at school (where they may or may not be getting bullied) and sometimes misfortune awaits them. Online bullying, or cyber bullying, is not as easily recognized. Sometimes these teens come home to receive private messages that threaten them or berate them. Other times they are the target of hate comments or indirect statuses. Meghan, a sophomore in high school, says that she remembers coming home to a ton of messages on Twitter that weren’t directly to her, but she could tell they were about her. “I was dating a popular boy in school,” she says, “and a lot of girls were jealous. They would post statuses saying things like ‘You think you’re pretty, but you’re not!’ and other hateful things because they wanted to date the boy I was dating.” Like Meghan, lots of teens, mostly girls – as mostly girls are targeted this way, feel that they cannot do much about these indirect messages. Even though one in three kids are cyber bullied, according to PBS.org, many teens feel that they are ‘weak’ for asking for help. Teens are more likely to tell their friends their troubles with the internet than their parents, even though their friends can do little to help and support them. To deal with this form of bullying, the best way to act is to not react, but to be proactive. You should block peers if they become a problem on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The same can be done for phone numbers if the bullying takes place by text or voicemails. Sometimes bullying is done anonymously. If anonymous hate becomes a problem, there are ways to disable it. If unknown email addresses or phone numbers keep contacting you, you should consider changing your email address or phone number, respectively.  Websites like Formspring.me and Tumblr have anonymity features that allow users to withhold their usernames and send messages to other users.

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