Cyber Bullying Paper

Cyber Bullying/Bullying

I want you to remember when you were back in school. It can be high school, middle school, or elementary school. How was your experience in school? Were you apart of the popular crowd? Did you ever stop to think about the students who got picked on everyday and all the thoughts that were going through their minds? They probably suffered a lot of emotional distress growing up. I feel as if this is not the way to grow up in society. The present policies regarding cyber bullying/bullying should be changed for two reasons: the safety of teenagers and to prevent discrimination in school.

Policies regarding cyber bullying should be enforced for the safety of teenagers. Cyber bullying has caused many teenagers to commit suicide. Teenagers are more vulnerable to cyber bullying since they aren't too educated or experienced when faced with a dilemma. Megan Meier, a 13 year old girl from Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, hung herself after she received cruel messages from a boy who she thought was Josh Evans, but it turned out to be the mother of one of her friends (Steinhauer, 2008). Sometimes an individual becomes a victim just because of another person's envy. After having received several messages via text messages and through Facebook from other students simply because she dated an older boy, 15-year-old Phoebe Prince killed herself (Goldman, 2010). In order to prevent cyber bullying, school officials and parents should be more involved in the children's lives. School authorities have to and have the right to prevent situations from getting out of control if they are aware of it. When students' speech become disruptive or even interferes with other students, the Federal Courts ruled that school officials have the right to react to these situations (Willard, 2010). Parents also have to become a bigger influence in their children lives. Parents should monitor what their children are doing online, by controlling their time limit or by installing software such as PC Tattletale which records everything they do online.

Bullying polices in school should be changed to prevent discrimination amongst students. Students often pick and harass other kids based on their sex, race and weight. This type of behavior is very serious and causes our kids to build bad habits. We have laws that protect us from discrimination at a work place; however we do not have laws that prevent the same in schools. We have to create a healthy stable environment for our kids in schools to be able to get a proper education. Sexual harassment has to be prevented in schools. We take sexual harassment very seriously in a workplace and therefore we have to prevent sexual harassment in schools as well. Girls are more likely to be victims of sexual harassment in schools and it causes victims even more harm than bullying (Springer, 2008). Proper policies must be enforced where victims of sexual harassment in school could report such a behavior to teachers or parents. Students that engage in such a behavior have to be punished and their behavior has to be taken very seriously. We have to focus and make sure that our kids in school are developing proper social skills. Bullying based on discrimination is currently a major issue in our schools. Civil rights protect us from bullying and harassment based on race, religion, nationality, political beliefs ("Federal Officials Aim to Prevent Bullying", 2010). We have to pass proper laws and regulations that would put stop to bullying in schools. In Iowa lawmakers passed a Safe School Law which prevents bullying based on race, sex, religion and 17 other categories ("Federal Officials Aim To Prevent Bullying", 2010). Other states have to follow this example and pass the same laws. If we do not focus on our kids in school now, our society will fail soon. Kids in school are our future and therefore