“Drink bleach and die

Kristin NguyenProfessor PetersonWriting 39C10 June 2015Cyberbullying in Public Schools“Drink bleach and die.” “Why are you still alive?” “Can you die please?” These werehateful messages sent to twelve year old Rebecca Ann Sedwick, who after one year of being acyberbullying victim, decided to answer her bullies’ requests by jumping to her death at anabandoned cement factory near her home (Alvarez). After this tragedy, Sedwick’s parents werelooking for someone to blame, and resulted in pointing their fingers at her school for notidentifying and punishing her bullies soon enough. This was only one of the numerous suicidecases that resulted from bullying. According to Yale University, bully victims are up to 9 timesmore likely to consider suicide than non-victims (Peart). Cyberbullying has become a significantproblem, with harassments happening on and off school campuses, as well as on both private andpublic accounts. While there has not been a “cure” to fully stop cyberbullying, some schoolshave made efforts to combat this issue. More specifically, one school district in Glendale,California has hired a third party surveillance company, Geo Listening, to access and monitortheir students’ online activities. While this may seem like a technology forward response to atechnology-based problem, its substantial price tag and inability to penetrate private accountsand conversations results in a lack of efficiency and success. Therefore, a better and morereliable alternative would be the employment of a specialized, on-campus counselor. Theimplementation of a counselor would give schools a more tangible resource, one who isequipped with school-related context, guidance, student trust, and special education classes.Many researchers, including Catherine Mendola and Patricia Sheridan, who have both evaluatedthe effectiveness (or lack thereof) of a surveillance company like Geo Listening, have come tothe conclusion that cyberbullying has negatively and quickly made its way through teen life andneeds to be stopped immediately, before the consequences escalate.In the wake of “widely publicized tragedies”, such as student suicide from cyberbullying,the Glendale Unified School District (GUSD) in California has taken preventative steps byemploying Geo Listening, “a third-party company to monitor public posts by students made bothon and off school grounds” (Mendola). Geo Listening, a Hermosa Beach-based technologycompany, was hired in 2013 to conduct “broad, continuous surveillance” and ultimately costsGUSD $40,500 per year (Sheridan). This company scans GUSD’s 14,000 students’ publicpostings on social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc., for certain keywordssignifying “bullying, cyberbullying, hate and shaming activities, depression, harm and self-harm,self-hate and suicide, crime, vandalism, substance abuse and truancy”, and then alerts thedesignated school with daily reports of their findings (Sheridan). Geo Listening’s website statesthat its goal is to shift the moment of school intervention from when the harm is already toosevere, to when the cyberbullying has just started. In other words, with Geo Listening’ssurveillance system, their ultimate goal is to stop cyberbullying before it leads to student selfharm and depression.While it may seem that GUSD chose to take a step in the right direction, critics ofGUSD’s decision to monitor their students’ postings have constructed their arguments on a FirstAmendment basis. In “one of the most influential U.S. Supreme Court cases” when it comes toregulating student speech, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969),the court held that schools could not punish students for speech they find disagreeable unless it“materially and substantially” interferes with school operations (Stewart and Fritsch). Withoutexplicit Supreme Court guidance on cyberbullying (only a free speech precedent from thelandmark Tinker case), individual schools must ultimately and independently make the decisionsregarding their students’ privacy and safety (Suski). Due to the fact that the Supreme Court hasnot ruled on off-campus Internet speech, the authority of student surveillance and regulationconducted by schools remains ambiguous. The line between keeping the school a safeenvironment and intruding on student privacy is blurred. With regards to cyberbullyingmonitoring tactics, it is up to schools themselves to decide what level of intervention is allowableand what is beyond a school’s traditional responsibilities.The main issue is: does Geo Listening invade student free speech guaranteed by the FirstAmendment? Surprisingly, the answer is no. Due to the fact that Geo Listening can only viewand search through public profiles, a student can easily protect himself from surveillance byusing privacy controls. For example, when a public account user posts statuses or images on hisprofile, he intends for the posts to be read by the public at large. If the student did not want to bemonitored by a school surveillance system, all he would have to do is change his privacysettings. Geo Listening can only monitor public accounts, which is what any other peer or parentwould be able to do during their own time.However, even though First Amendment rights are protected from Geo Listening, theirlack of intrusion is a noteworthy downside to be considered. According to the Pew Internet andAmerican Life Project teen research conducted in 2011, only 14% of teenagers set their onlineprofiles to completely public (Madden). Using this statistic, it can be concluded that GeoListening would only be monitoring a small portion of the student population, and therefore noteffectively reaching the entire student body. Additionally, if these 14% of students became awareof school surveillance, they would probably switch to a private account, which would ultimatelyjeopardize Geo Listening’s effectiveness. The cyberbullying incidents that happen on privateaccounts will not be found, and therefore will not be prevented. In another similar study from thePew Research Center, 92% of teens report going online daily, including 24% who say they goonline “almost constantly” (Lenhart). With almost a quarter of teens persistently on the Internet,they are bound to cross paths with cyberbullies. Truth is, a minimally intrusive surveillancecompany like Geo Listening would not be able to save every child from online harms. It isalmost inevitable for young students to not run into trouble while surfing the Web. Overall, asurveillance program like Geo Listening would hence not have enough access to student socialmedia to change the negative path of cyberbullying.Subsequent to student online usage, as mentioned above, Geo Listening continues to havemore drawbacks when it comes to catching bullies in the act. Public Internet posts are just “thetip of the iceberg” (Mendola). Geo Listening, and any other online surveillance company, cannotinfiltrate peer-to-peer text messages, personal emails, or chat applications, which is where “muchof student bullying, online threats, and unsafe conduct occurs” (Mendola). With smartphonesbeing so prevalent in teen life, there is a high chance that bullying happens over private text oremail conversations that are not posted on online profiles. According to the Pew ResearchCenter, 58% of teens have or have access to a smartphone and 30% have a basic phone, whileonly 12% of teens say they have no cell phone of any type (Madden). Besides on a computer,these phones are most likely where cyberbullying occurs. Due to the fact that a majority of teenshave their own cellphone, a program like Geo Listening would be unable to access these privateone-on-one communications, which in turn continues to decrease the value of their surveillancesystem.Most importantly, other schools should not follow in GUSD’s path of hiring GeoListening due to the financial burden that comes along with it. Under-paid teachers,administrators, and unemployed counselors who could make a greater impact on thiscyberbullying epidemic would be critics of using district resources to pay for third-partysurveillance companies (Patchin and Hinduja). Although Geo Listening is currently onlyimplemented in one school district, it can be assumed that other districts would be charged asimilar price to GUSD’s contract. With such low benefits arising from the surveillance service,an annual cost of $40,500 triumphs the benefits. Since Geo Listening is a for-profit company,their services are split in motivation and they only aim to make money for themselves(Mendola). Surveillance companies must lookout for the survival of their own company first,before actually providing help to schools.A better solution to this increasing cyber problem would be that schools pursue saferonline student interactions by employing effective counselors to provide cyber education. Inorder to stray schools away from hiring online monitoring companies, the CyberbullyingResearch Center co-founder, Justin Patchin, suggests that schools should invest in counseling tonot only prevent, but also deal with cyberbullying. Having an on-site counselor specialized incyberbullying would be beneficial to the school environment in many ways. Althoughproponents of professional surveillance claim that their system is beneficial due to no violationsof the First Amendment, Geo Listening’s abilities are limited due to the ease of student privacysettings. The system also lacks effectiveness and is not worth its significant price tag. Fordistricts that have money available in their budget, it might be better to invest those fundselsewhere. According to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Americanschool counselor, as of May 2012, makes approximately $53,610 per year on average. Althoughthe hiring of an additional counselor for each school requires much more money than anestimated annual $40,500 contract with Geo Listening for the whole district, the benefit ofhaving a specialized resource on campus may have a more positive effect on cyberbullying.One reason to hire a counselor over a third-party surveillance system is the value ofcontext. Context about the school, student body, or even the specific student is key whenevaluating student bullying cases. For example, knowledge of school gossip, how class schedulesare structured, student interactions, upcoming school events, current community issues, or schoolgeneral culture and traditions would be essential to fully understanding cyberbullying situations(Mendola). A counselor would be able to evaluate the student in both an emotional and academicstate, which would only provide more benefits to the victim. When trying to put a stop tocyberbullying, the on-campus counselor would know how to help the victim cope with hiscurrent surroundings. On the other hand, a third-party professional would not know these details,and would have to keep in touch with its clients in order to learn the required context, whichwould not overall be effective for urgent cyberbullying cases.Furthermore, the employment of a counselor would allow students to have a trustedconfidant on campus. Trust is an important factor when students search for help. Most teens onlywant to divulge in someone who would understand what they were going through, which iswhere a specialized counselor would be useful. Keeping a confidentiality promise and open-doorpolicy by being physically on campus may encourage student discussion. Surveillancecompanies would only do the complete opposite, by eroding the trust between schooladministrators and students, since they would feel like they were being spied on (Mendola).Instead, with a counselor present, students would feel more comfortable in sharing only theinformation that they want to.Concurrently, counselors could conduct school-wide cyberbullying education classes toenhance the movement for a change. By educating students about social media usage, it couldassist in improving awareness of the consequences for online behavior, and also encourage opendialogue in regards to cyberbullying. In January 2014, the New Jersey Senate nearlyunanimously passed Bill No. 3292, which proposed that the state’s school districts educatestudents in grades six to eight about the responsibility of social media usage, as part of the CoreCurriculum Content Standards in Technology (Mendola). This requirement engages students incyber safety training, security, and “cyber ethics”, along with the negative consequences that willarise from improper social media usage (Mendola). If more states followed New Jersey’s actions,more students would be educated early on about cyberbullying, which may help decrease thenumber of victimizations. Schools could use these required cyber education classes to advocate asafer environment and help put a stop to cyberbullying overall. If more students knew about thedangers and consequences of bullying, maybe they would think twice before engaging in it, aswell as keep an eye out for their peers. Relying on education is a much better alternative thanconducting surveillance, since no student trust is being eroded, as well as no student speech isbeing chilled.Another resource that counselors can provide for cyberbullying issues is peer-to-peereducation. For example, one of the leading organizations involved in youth education aboutinternet safety and cyberbullying is i-SAFE (Bhat). Their i-Mentor program focuses on trainingpeer mentors to educate fellow students about the dangers of online use. Another program,Bullying. No Way! helps makes students aware of cyberbullying by providing links to anticyberbullying movies made by other students. If a counselor were to introduce these two peereducation programs to the school, it would empower and mobilize students to get involved andbe a part of the solution (Bhat). Students, assisted by the professional counselor, would be in turnhelping each other, and therefore creating more awareness on the harms of cyberbullying.Finally, another way that counselors can fight cyberbullying is by educating parents. It isvital that parents understand the causes of cyberbullying and how to deal with their victimizedchild. Parents also need to be aware that only 10% of young victims will confide in them (Bhat).As students rarely turn to their parents for help, it is important for them to know the signs ofwhen their child is getting bullied. Although parents do generally set online rules to forbid theirteens from divulging personal information or talking to strangers, they seldom teach theirchildren about the possible threats that may arise from their “friends” or peers at school. Trained,professional school counselors can fix this issue by providing parents with the right resources tolearn about the various dangers associated with cyberspace. School counsellors can also inviteparents to participate in open discussions about cyberbullying, as well as direct them to websiteswith educational materials specifically designed for parents with cyberbullied children.In conclusion, although many parents and community members support the expansion ofschool efforts to combat cyberbullying, it is important to keep in mind that the school’s numberone priority should be to maintain an educational environment to teach students, not to invadetheir private lives. The Tinker court called schools the “marketplace of ideas”, which emphasizesthe importance of learning in formal education. To promote this sense of learning, schools mustfigure out a way to balance student free speech with the need to discipline “material andsubstantial” disruptions (Mendola). Allowing school administrators to monitor their studentswith continuous surveillance companies removes any distinction between students’ schoolspeech and speech guaranteed by the First Amendment (Sheridan). Hiring a company like GeoListening would only jeopardize the trust that students feel toward their superiors, which isoverall an ineffective solution. Instead, schools should use their resources to hire a professionalcounselor, who would in turn be able to physically be on campus for support and provide cybereducation to the students directly, as well as their parents. Overall, cyberbullying has become aglobal problem over the last decade and ultimately requires an educated, not invasive, solution tofix.