Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying, what a hot topic this is in today's world.  Children are introduced to technology, the internet, and social media before they can even walk.  I know someone who created an Instagram account this year for her baby who is not even 1 yet.  People have social media accounts for their pets, this is the world we live in now.  With the introduction of social media to children at such a young age, they do not comprehend the what is appropriate, what is unkind, and what can be damaging to them and their peers when something is posted.  At the middle school I used to work at, a group of 7th and 8th graders go into real trouble by circulating revealing pictures of each other.  This is something they have seen on TV, read about on the internet, and so on.  They did not realize the consequences of their actions such as the possibility of being charged with 'distribution of child pornography.'  In many incidences where students got in trouble for posting things on social media, many of them did not think through or even realize how this could be perceived  by others and also impact their future at such a young age.  I liked reading about the school district in Illinois that does a digital citizenship project between to schools allowing students to produce a relevant, meaningful product that actually gets them thinking about digital citizenship along with cyberbullying to realize the impacts different actions can have.  I like this image a lot that I posted above, THINK before you post or even write an email.  

What stood out to me this week is how cyberbullying is not just in a k-12 school.  Cyberbullying mostly refers to young people attacking each other but this is not an issue only faced by the youth in this country.  In this week's Seven Digital Deadly Sins resource, the wrath page  focused on cyberbullying and anger on the internet.  Looking at the internet anger piece along with the going through the questions about email confrontation, I started thinking about how adults cyberbully each other as well through email, social media, getting into a comment argument on a post or article on a web page.  We do need to focus a lot on the educating the youth about digital citizenship, but adults need to be educated as well.  Many of them did not have the internet until they were in the middle of their life, there was no school programs to help them understand to THINK before posting.  Many adults probably do not even realize the extent of the internet or the idea of the Six Degrees of Separation.  

As school librarians we need to focus on the youth in this country, they will be the future leaders in this Age of Technology.  I like how the Illinois school district really got their students involved in a project.  As librarians, we can work with guidance counselors to help them bring in digital citizenship discussions to their guidance orientations each year.  We can work with computer and technology teachers to help the integrate digital citizenship into their curriculum.   We can also collaborate with core teachers such as ELA to create digital citizenship lessons they can use in their classrooms or in the library with their students.  This week is Digital Citizenship Week, a library program could be put together a head of time to promote and highlight different concepts of digital citizenship.  There are many ways we as librarians can get involved in educating about digital citizenship to our students, the internet is full of resources.  

Guardian, The.  Nation Film Board of Canada.  (2014).  Seven Digital Deadly Sins.  http://sins.nfb.ca/#/Grid

Medford Area Middle School.  (2018).  Digital Citizenship/ Technology Skills.  Picture retrieved form https://www.medford.k12.wi.us/schools/middle/academics/digital-citizenship.cfm

Orech, J. (2012). How it's done: Incorporating digital citizenship into your everyday curriculum. Tech & Learning, 33(1), 16-18.

Smith, David.  (2008).  Proof!  Just six degrees of separation between us.  The Guardian.  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/aug/03/internet.email