Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying
What stands out the most to me and surprised me the most from this week's readings about cyberbullying is that cyberbullying continues throughout higher education and in the workplace (Faucher, Cassidy, & Jackson, 2015). I heard a lot about cyberbullying when I was in high school. I unfortunately knew classmates that bullied and classmates that were bullied. Yik Yak was a popular social media platform people would use to cyberbully others anonymously. The platform ended up being removed and was recently relaunched in 2021 with a stance against bullying (Franklin, 2021). I truly hope it is no longer being used for cyberbullying and slander.
I am actually currently planning a digital citizenship lesson for my classes. In today's society, it is our responsibility to help our children become good citizens in the online realm. There is no avoiding it. Workplaces are turning to online platforms rather than producing paper copies and files. At some point, the children we raise and work with are going to come across online platforms and social media and it is our job to prepare them. As a school librarian for elementary aged students, I will be promoting books like Garfield's Guide to Digital Citizenship. These are a series of books, discussing pausing before posting online, being kind online, a guide to having online friends, and a cautionary tale on downloading items off of the internet (Nickel, Craven, Lovitt, 2020).
Hi Katie!
ReplyDeleteYou are blessed to be surprised by the existence of bullying in the workplace! I think it looks different and sometimes is harder to identify it as such. Intimidation and retaliation are the main things I've witnessed in workplaces. The Faucher et al. article also mentioned things like persistent/unwarranted criticism and unreasonable deadlines or unmanageable workloads. That has happened to myself and many teachers I know throughout my career.
Thank you for sharing the Garfield Digital Citizenship curriculum guides. I haven't heard of them and look forward to exploring them!
Hi Katie,
ReplyDeleteI was also very surprised that bullying is such a big problem in higher education and in the workplace. There were definitely some mean kids in high school but I had assumed that they would grow out of it as adults. I think I must have just been very fortunate so far in my higher ed and work career.
Cyber bullying was not really too much of a thing when I was in high school because it was still the era of MySpace - Facebook was still in its infancy and you had to have a college email to access it. Although face to face bullying is still awful, it seems that cyberbullying is even more insidious because you cannot escape it. Kids use their phones / internet to socialize outside of school. It is like the bullies are able to follow them home and everywhere else they go.
Thank you for sharing the Garfield books that is such a neat resources. I will be on the lookout for those so I can add them to my collection.
Thanks,
Lauren Jordan
Thanks for all the resources that you shared this week. I love the Garfield series on Digital Citizenship. I can see myself using these in the elementary school library and even middle school. I agree with the other comments that bullying does not just happen in elementary, middle, and high school. I can see it happening in the workplace daily. It could be playing jokes on other people or commenting mean comments on social media. It could be verbal abuse as well. I think for so long many people have hid behind a computer screen that our social skills are lacking. That is why it is so important for us to teach our students about digital citizenship and how to use the computer appropriately in hopes that we will share life long skills that will help with communication.
ReplyDeleteI think it's so important to teach students about this topic at a young age and then continue to hold them accountable throughout their school years so it hopefully won't carry over into their adult lives and their workplaces. The important thing to remember is that people who bully often have an underlying issue causing them to harm others. For that reason, I also think mental health is extremely important and connected in this topic. There has been a lot of research done in the importance of mental health councilors in elementary school. I truly believe that if we can support students from a young age, then hopefully they will learn the lifeskills it takes to be kind human beings in the long run. Thanks for being an advocate for our students when dealing with digital citizenship Katie!
ReplyDeleteHey, Katie!
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your thoughts on the hot topic of cyberbullying. Unlike you, I did not know about cyberbullying in high school because my friends and I just started creating social media accounts when we were seniors in high school. Therefore, cyberbullying wasn’t even mentioned to us. However, in the digital world that we live in, children and adults are exposed to cyberbullying. I agree with you, if we teach children at an early age how to treat others online, they will take that with them in every step of life. This is why we (librarians), have to know how to teach children all about digital citizenship and cyberbullying in order for them to be successful in the technological world we live in today.
Thank you so much for sharing!
Sincerely,
Courtland Smith