Sunday, July 11, 2021

 I don't know if any research has ever been conducted on the statistical percentage of librarians that were bullied during their adolescent and teenage years, but I would be willing to bet that if such research does exist it would show a fairly high percentage. After all, even the stereotype of a librarian as a bookish, prudish woman in a tight bun and a constant frown of disapproval on her face is enough to make any reasonable person wonder how such an individual made it through high school alive. I graduated high school in 1996 and was the frequent target of a "queen bee" mean girl who seemed to live for moments where she could bring me close to tears. But I count my lucky stars that the internet was still in it's infancy during those high school years and cyberbullying wasn't as much of a thing.

These days, bullying has evolved as the internet has expanded and allowed users access to resources. In the Red Frame article we were assigned to read for this week I was surprised to see that the analysis of numerous studies on traditional bullying and cyberbully showed such huge discrepancies on the prevalence and underlying factors associated with bullying behavior, down to whether or not cyberbullying should even be considered a separate type of aggression or whether it should be lumped in with traditional forms bullying. I agreed with the statement made early in the paper on section 2 that states: 

"However, a number of nuances have been drawn in order to articulate what repetition, intent, and power imbalance represent when it comes to cyberbullying, such as: the potential for anonymity in online communications; the detachment that results from not seeing the target’s reaction to a message; the permanent nature of online messages (i.e. self-repeating); the wider audience of bystanders to cyberbullying; and the variable nature of the power imbalance in online communications." (Cassidy, Brown, & Jackson, 2011; Cassidy, Faucher, & Jackson, 2013; Dooley, Pyżalski, & Cross, 2009; Grigg, 2010; Kowalski, Morgan, & Limber, 2012; Menesini, 2012; Smith & Slonje, 2010; Vandebosch & Van Cleemput, 2009).

 I agree with this statement and the proposal that this is an important topic that needs to be addressed frequently with students starting at a young age, especially considering the increasing rate of suicide amongst ever younger children, much of which has been linked to cyberbullying. I also agree with the sentiment that cyberbullying should be classified as a different type of aggression with different qualifiers to meet the definition of a qualifying occurrence due to the permanence of content posted online, and the (much) larger potential audience within social media as opposed to in person, physical aggression. 

In terms of how I plan to address this topic with my own students when we go back in August, I have used the Common Sense media website resources, including their pre-assembled lesson plans -in past years and will likely do so again. When I completed my digital curation assignment on this project I also discovered Google's "Be Internet Awesome" resources and was impressed by those, particularly some of the interactive games.

In all, I think it is important to unify as one: one class, one school, one district and one community as a whole, to condemn bullying in all forms and help students understand the important distinction between life as it is portrayed online in formats such as social media, and the often harsher and less perfect version of life that is reality. 

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