Teenagers Let 'GMA' Inside the World of Cyberbullying
Teens reveal how some apps and social media expose them to online bullying.
— -- School bullies don’t have to corner their victims in the locker room anymore. As evidence, a group of teenagers from San Francisco agreed to tell “Good Morning America” how some apps and social media can expose them to an online world of insults.
“At my middle school there was like, a lot of issues. To the point where we had to … the counselor had to talk to our entire grade,” one of the teens, Sofia, told ABC News.
The group says many of the mean comments are about physical appearance.
“We never have one bully,” another teen said. “It’s just like, everyone talking behind everyone else’s back.”
Saskia, whom ABC News is identifying by her first name only, says she even quit one messaging app soon after joining because of harassment.
“I got bullied on it within the first half hour, and I deleted it the day after because I was crying,” she said.
A negative comment or two is one thing. But experts define cyberbullying as when someone is hurtful repeatedly and deliberately.
In recent years, several teen suicides have been linked to cyberbullying. But experts caution that cyberbullying is almost never the sole factor in teen suicide.
“Parents don’t need to ride in like the cavalry and fix this problem,” senior parenting editor Caroline Knorr of Common Sense Media said. “They do not want parents to solve this problem. They do need the tools to solve the problem themselves.”
One tool to help prevent bullying is the new Google Chrome extension called Reword. It acts as kind of a spellcheck for negative language, letting the writer think twice about what they’re about to send and gives them an opportunity to change it.
Meanwhile, this group of teens is optimistic and says teenagers are starting to take it upon themselves to police bullies.
“There’s this kind of sympathy almost for the bully now,” Olivia, another teen, said. “So you say, ‘What is causing you to do this?’ It’s not just, you attack the bully. You want to make it stop. You want to make it better in the long run.”