Feb. 9: Recognize and Stop Cyberbullying

Many adults dismiss schoolyard bullying as a normal rite of passage.  But things have changed in this Internet age.

“The explosion of technology in recent years has given rise to the phenomenon known as ‘cyberbullying,’ which involves using the Internet or other mobile devices to send or post harmful or cruel texts or images,” Allyson Bowen, a clinical social worker from Columbia, South Carolina, tells the Catholic Chronicle.

According to Bowen, we once imagined a bully to be a burly boy picking on smaller kids on the playground.  Now the problem is also girls targeting other girls on the Internet.  In fact, Allyson notes that now girls “are about twice as likely as boys to be not only victims but perpetrators” of cyberbullying.

“Everyone has been targeted at some point in his or her life,” says Bowen. “The difference between us being targets and becoming victims is our coping skills.”

Teach your kids empathy as well as what they need to know to protect themselves in this new technological era.

In everything do to others as you would have them do to

you; for this is the law.  (Matthew 7:12)

Dear God, heal those in need of Your comfort.