Bullying and its consequences: In search of solutions—Part II

Introduction

In the previous volume we presented a series of contributions by a number of leading scholars that meant to provide a foundation regarding the current research on bullying and a brief discussion of some of the challenges in the understanding and development of effective prevention and intervention responses. In this context, we emphasized the importance of looking at the bullying experience as a complex dynamic interaction of various influences (systems) which come into play directly or indirectly at all times at the moment of a bullying act (Espelage, Rao, & La Rue, 2013). In ‘Compelling reasons to battle bullying and lessons from the field’ by Novick (2013) whose summary was not included in the first introduction in error, the author suggested a reframing of bully prevention as a leadership development program that includes the appreciation for diversity and pro-social citizenship. She answered the question, why should schools adopt bully prevention programs and argues for the many positives outcomes (other than reduction in bullying behaviors) associated with these programs. Further, Novick pointed out the core components for effective bully prevention programs and discussed some lessons she has learned from the field.

Among the lessons learned from the field, Novick emphasized the importance of engaging the school leadership directly. It was her contention that the outcome of a bully prevention initiative is directly related to the dedication of the school leadership. Finally, the article described the importance of program fidelity and integrity that led to positive change.

Novick's article offered important strategies and guidelines for effective implementation with the hope that bully prevention programs could become a valued and integral part of every student's school experience.

The advancement in technology has made it more difficult to identify perpetrators because of the issue of anonymity (Chisholm & Day, 2013), creating a set of more uncertain conditions and greater challenges. We will now discuss briefly some of these challenges that are continuously complicating the problem at hands and that require from us a multidisciplinary and multi-prone approach to its solution, as suggested by Espelage et al. (2013) and by Novick (2013) in the previous special journal issue.

Bullying and technology

Bullying is certainly a major problem in society because the traditional forms of bullying (e.g., bus rides, school hallways, and the playground) are no longer the sole arena for these incidences. Children and adolescents are becoming more dependent and connected to their technological devices and with that comes both costs in terms of the potential misuse of technology, and benefits in terms of educational and learning opportunities. In the various manuscripts included in the special journal issues, we use the term cyberbullying to refer to the use of technology in the bullying arena. Cyberbullying is a particularly vicious form of bullying that has resulted in instances of suicide by some of those who have been victimized. It consists of the use of e-mail, texts, blogging, social media, etc., in order to elicit intentional harm on others (Chisholm & Day, 2013). According to recent research on the effects of bullying, approximately 10–40% of youth are estimated to have reported being victims of some form of cyberbullying, and upwards of 20% admitted to cyberbullying others (Hinduja & Patchin, 2010). Researchers have also found that 27% of youth who were victims of cyberbullying have also carried a weapon to school (David-Ferdon & Hertz, 2007; National Association of School Psychologists Position Statement, 2012; Ybarra, Diener-West, & Leaf, 2007).

Children and adolescents are using technology to a greater extent and their lives have become immersed in the digital world and social media. According to the Pew Research Center's statistics, 78% of teens own a cell phone, almost half (47%) of which are smartphones (Madden, Lenhart, Duggan, Cortesi, & Gasser, 2013). They also found that one in four teens (23%) has a tablet computer, and nine out of ten (93%) teens have a computer or have access to one at home. According to Cassidy, Jackson, and Brown (2009), 98% of Canadian youth access the Internet and communication technologies on a daily basis. With the increase in technology and easy access to the Internet has come the explosion of social media sites. In fact, between February 2005 and August 2006, the use of social networking sites among young adult Internet users ages 18–29 years jumped from 9 to 49% (Duggan & Brenner, 2013). Although technology and social networking has been shown to increase communication and offer educational support to children, it is the misuse of this technology that has become a concern. In fact, as society has become immersed in social media sites and as technology and social media platforms further develop and multiply, so do the instances of bullying. Parents and teachers often feel quite overwhelmed not only with the voracity that cyberbullying takes place but the multiplicity of the forms, leaving them somewhat at a loss to being able to keep up. The fact is that with new apps and websites created daily, different forms of electronic bullying are being created each and every day. Within just a few years we have seen a change in how victims are being targeted on the Internet. Chatrooms and instant-messages are a common source of interaction among youngsters; these platforms allow individuals to remain anonymous and target others directly without identifying oneself. More recently social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have gained popularity and made it possible for cyberbullying to be done in a more public way.

Researchers at University of Wisconsin in Madison trained a computer to analyze Twitter messages using an algorithm created to identify and count words or symbols that may indicate bullying. The study found that on average 15,000 bullying-related tweets are posted everyday (Xu, Jun, Zhu, & Bellmore, 2012). On sites like these, crude, derogatory, and often sexually exploitive comments are posted under pictures or on individuals ‘walls’. Other venues for such harassment are websites such as Formspring, where individuals create webpages that allow others to post questions anonymously. With light hearted intentions, the website aimed to be fun and entertaining; however, we have seen the negatives of such a site such as in the case of Alexis Pilkington, a 17-year-old who took her own life after crude comments were repeatedly posted on her page. Her case is an example of how harassment can often continue even after one's death. After a memorial page was set up in her honor, lewd comments and disturbing pictures of nooses were left on the page anonymously, further demonstrating just how merciless people can be (Martinez, 2012). It seems as though the Internet gives users a sense of detachment and the sense of anonymity may be further fueling the fire by decreasing one's inhibition.

Text messaging is another communication tool that has become one of the primary means of communication among adolescents, with estimates of teens sending or receiving an average of 3,000 text messages per month (Lenhart, Ling, Campbell, & Purcell, 2010). With this popular communication venue has come the issue of sexting or the exchange of nude or semi-nude pictures of oneself via text. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy (2008) found that 19% of teens (aged 13–19 years) had sent a sexually suggestive picture or video of themselves to someone via email, cell phone, or through another form of online interaction, while 31% had received a nude or semi-nude picture from someone else. Oftentimes, the images are sent to romantic partners but as we have seen in recent media stories, the photos can quickly be sent to many unintended recipients. Hope Witsell, a 13-year-old is a prime example of the tragic consequences of sexting. She sent a topless photo of herself to a boy in hopes of gaining his attention but instead, she got the attention of her entire school, as well as the high school nearby. After, the image was circulated to the phones of countless individuals the bullying became relentless. The bullying took place in school where, according to a friend, “She was afraid to walk alone, she was afraid someone would do something to her, like verbally attacking her” (Kaye, 2010, p. 4). Her situation became even more out of control when a ‘Hope Hater’ page on an online popular social media site was created. It was there that individuals began attacking her anonymously. Hope remained silent through all this, but hanged herself when it became too much for her to bear. Her suicide serves as a stark illustration of the all too common dangerous and deadly consequences of sexting.

Instagram is another relatively recent addition to the technology world that is of great concern to parents and teachers. It is an app for devices such as iPads and smart phones that has taken the photography and social media world by storm. Users can download the app for free and use it to take, modify, and comment on pictures which are then by default available for anyone in the world to see. Bullying on this app is done in a variety of ways, one is to use the hashtag feature which allows people to post pictures of others and then comment with hashtags such as #fuglyslut, #tryweightwatchers, #whore, #cantbelievesheworethat or #nofriends and, much worse. Also on Instagram there is a new trend that has caught on with younger girls referred to as ‘instagram pagaents’ (Bloomquist, 2013). This is when girls create a grid of photos of different girls they know and ask other users to judge who is the prettiest by posting a comment. At the end, the creator tallies up the votes and decides on the winner, who ultimately gets bragging rights. The loser gets a red X across her face which along with the resulting embarrassment, shame, and major blow to her self-esteem, tends to create havoc in the victim's mental life.

As cruel and malicious the above practice can be considered, the situation can become even more damaging for the victim and gives us a glimpse as to the extent to which someone could go to do harm to another. See for instance the other unique type of Cyberbullying known as ‘catfishing.’ This is a practice of setting up a fictitious online profile, most often for the purpose of luring another into a fraudulent romantic relationship. The case of Anthony Stancl, an 18-year-old who in 2009 impersonated two girls (‘Kayla’ and ‘Emily’) on Facebook serves as a tragic story of ‘catfishing’. Posing as a girl, he befriended and formed online relationships with a number of boys in his high school and subsequently convinced many of the boys to send him nude pictures of themselves. He then threatened to release the photos to the victims’ friends and classmates if the youths who had sent them to him did not agree to perform sexual acts. Anthony Stancl was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison for using the photos as blackmail in attempts to sexually assault seven boys. This scenario is an example of “sextortion,” a term created to describe a form of sexual exploitation that employs non-physical forms of coercion to force sexual favors from the victim. Online this occurs when a child, or teenager, meets a stranger online, through social media or a chat site. The predator gains the child's trust and convinces him or her to send a lewd photo. The predator then uses that photo to blackmail the child for more compromised photos, threatening to send the photo to the child's parents or friends—or publish it online for the world to see—unless the child provides something racier (McClam, 2013). This is all too common and although many may not consider this as ‘cyberbullying’, it is certainly deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior that is used to intimidate, control, and manipulate.

The complicated situation here is that the unsuspected victim who engages in online exchange of personal information can unwittingly find himself or herself contributing to his/her own demise by maintaining a false sense of security as if they have much more control about what they reveal electronically than actually is the case. This is what occurs in the case of the ‘snapchat’, an app that, according to the app's website (http://www.snapchat.com), is designed to ‘share moments with friends. Snap an ugly selfie or a video, add a caption, and send it to a friend (or maybe a few)’. The idea behind the app is that users can send funny pictures to one another quicker than a standard text messages and the sender can choose how long each photo is viewed for, with the promise that after that, the snap disappears forever. Without the fear of having a picture last forever, many adolescents and young adults have innocently been persuaded to send nude or indecent pictures to one another. What snapchatters are discovering is that due to quick improvements in technology, the iphone now has the ability to take screenshots of these images and store them indefinitely. Revengeful or naïve users have been posting these images on a variety of websites, with serious consequences.

Psychological and neurological factors to consider in understanding cyberbullying

The extent to which someone could go to do harm to others, as it is possible in cyberbullying, leaves us with a lot of painful questions about the very nature of human condition, the psychological and neurological characteristics of those involved in bullying, the quality of the moral values that are guiding the behaviors of these individuals, the role of the educational, religious, and family institutions in the formation of our youth. From the perspectives of some, one may conclude that those involved in knowingly trying to destroy the reputation of others with apparently no empathic concerns belong to a category of individuals normally associated with a psychopathic tendency. We recognize, however, that the situation is more complicated than that because there are too many factors involved in the bullying itself and in the individuals involved as victims and perpetuators, as described in manuscripts by Espelage and associates, Novick, and Chisholm and her associate in the previous volume I (Javier & Dillon, 2013). What seems to be in operation on part of the victims is some issues related to their psychological vulnerability, including issues of identity, sense of belonging and need for external affirmation. On part of the perpetuators what may be in operation is a process known as ‘psychological distancing’ or perceptual distortion and distortion of reality, where the individuals involved in cyberbullying are functioning at a level of fantasy where the others are only characters that are there to satisfy feelings and behaviors that under other conditions may be experienced as brutal and criminal by the individuals but that now are permissible in the cyber sphere. So that the pain caused can easily be denied and relegated to the ‘not real’ and for which he/she needs not to be held responsible. Similar to the one required of the soldier when in combat, there is a suspension of all moral standards that may have guided these individuals under other conditions. It unleashes the kinds of animalistic and destructive tendency suggested by Titus Maccius Plautus in his Roman comedy Asinaria with his dictum ‘homo homini lupus est’(or man is a wolf to his fellow man) (1916) and that Freud described extensively in his work about the essence of human condition in Civilization and its Discontents and other works (Freud, 1923, 1929/1930). Comments made by Hunter Moore, the founder of Isanyoneup.com, a pornographic submission website that was known for ‘revenge porn’ and public humiliation provided us with a glimpse of this raw and dangerous mental set. At an interview on NBC's “Nightline” discussing his website, he stated that he was a self-proclaimed ‘professional life ruin-er’ and that he had no regret about hosting the website because the people on it were simply ‘characters and avatars and icons on a screen’ to him and he wanted to take ‘full advantage of people's mistakes’ (Karlinsky, Soichet, & Effron, 2012).

Obviously, there is a lot more to the picture of cyberbullying that a lapse in judgment or a descending to a lower stage of human development in the case of the perpetuator. Findings from cognitive neuroscience could prove to be useful in enhancing our understanding of the underlying causes of specific behaviors surrounding bullying by identifying neurological mechanisms that may be associated with aggression, anger, and other problems related to bullying. In fact, cognitive neuroscience has been able to identify the neurocognitive characteristics often connected to bullying behaviors by distinguishing between the different pathways of neural activity (Viding, McCrory, Blakemore, & Frederickson, 2011). Also, in comparison to other children, children who are bullied are likely to experience elevated levels of stress and report stress-related somatic complaints, such as headaches and stomachaches. Because of the association found between bullying and stress, researchers have begun to investigate the physiological experience of being bullied. In the presence of physiological stress, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis is found to be activated, triggering the release of cortisol which is measured through saliva samples. Elevated cortisol levels are associated with chronic stress and lower levels of cortisol are associated with less severe stress (Vaillancourt et al., 2011, 2008).

In stressful situations, the cortisol levels may fluctuate, having detrimental effects on one's health, particularly in the high levels. High cortisol levels can disrupt the functioning and regulation of bodily processes such as metabolism and blood pressure. This is a cause of concern because individuals who are bullied are more susceptible to experiencing stressful situations, leading to increased cortisol levels and affecting the health of those individuals even in the general population (including those individuals dealing with major life events and individuals suffering major depression). However, when looking at individuals suffering from generalized anxiety and panic disorder a decreased cortisol level was noted. In patients suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, there was an initial increase in cortisol release followed by a decrease in cortisol release (Staufenbiel, Penninx, Spijker, Elzinga, & van Rossum, 2013), a situation more likely to be found in individuals exposed to community violence, including bullying. Dehue, Bolman, Völlink, and Pouwelse (2012) found that employees who were bullied were more likely to report health problems, depressive symptoms and lack of a sense of well-being, an issue amply discussed by Kupferman and associates in this special journal issue. Luukkonen, Räsänen, Hakko and Riala (2010) further investigated the association between bullying behaviors and physical health and psychotic disorders, suggesting that boys and girls with externalizing disorders (conduct disorder or substance abuse related disorder) were more likely be a bully or bully-victims. Furthermore, boys diagnosed with an internalized disorder such as affective disorder, anxiety disorder, or psychotic disorder, or a somatic disorder were more likely to be victims. Other research suggests that peer victimization is associated with more serious health problems, increased abdominal pain, and more health visits along with a higher cortisol level immediately after the stressor and a lower cortisol level 30 minutes after the stressor (Knack, Jensen-Campbell & Baum, 2011). They also found that there are gender differences with respect to how males and females respond physiologically to bullying. Females, generally, have higher cortisol levels than males. However, when exposed to verbal victimization, males are likely to secrete higher levels of cortisol (Vaillancourt et al., 2008).

In conduct disorder, which is often associated with bullying tendencies, much research has been conducted on the neurological activity of males (Fanti & Kimonis, 2012; Viding, Simmonds, Petrides, & Frederickson, 2009). Structural brain abnormalities have been found in males with conduct disorder, suggesting that the reductions in grey matter volume in the left amygdala and interior insula bilateral are associated with aggressive behaviors. Moreover, empathy levels were found to be correlated with the reduction in anterior insula grey matter volume (Sterzer, Stadler, Poustka, & Kleinschmidt, 2007). In contrast to these results, Herpertz et al. (2008) found an increase in left side amygdala activity and no reduction in orbito-frontal, anterior cingulate and insular cortices in males with conduct disorder. While further research needs to be conducted on the brain activity of females with conduct disorder, Fairchild et al. (2013) found that when compared with controls, females with conduct disorder had a reduction in the bilateral anterior insula and the right striatal. Similar to males, reduction was found in amygdala grey matter volume in females with conduct disorder. Because the anterior insula is involved with empathy, a reduction in grey matter in this area indicates that adolescent females with conduct disorder may have lower levels of empathy. However, differences were found in insula volume; females had reductions in this area while males had opposite results.

Presence of callousness and its relationship to bullying has been another area of great focus for the scientific community. In fact, studies indicate that children with callous-unemotional traits are more likely to be aggressive and engage in bullying behaviors. Callous-emotional traits which are often associated with conduct disorders can be characterized as lack of guilt, empathy, concern, and low responsiveness to other people's distress (Frick & Viding, 2009). More directly related to bullying, Thornton, Frick, Crapanzano, and Terranova (2013) found that conduct disorder symptoms are positively associated with bullying and callous-unemotional traits predict bullying. In addition, conduct symptoms were more highly associated with bullying in those high in callous-unemotional traits.

Neurological studies suggest that children with conduct problems who are often displaying callous-unemotional traits are likely to be prone to amygdala hypoactivity, which means that these children may experience difficulty in recognizing fear. Marsh et al. (2008) found in this context that children with callous-unemotional traits report a reduction in amygdala activity when processing fearful facial expressions. Other research suggests that serotonin may interact closely with the amygdala, playing a role in the expression of aggressive behavior in adults and children (Marsh et al., 2013). Serotonin was found to be a significant predictor of callous-unemotional traits and serotonin levels were found to be significantly lower in boys with high levels of callous-unemotional traits (Moul, Dobson-Stone, Brennan, Hawes, & Dadds, 2013), suggesting less likely to show empathy.

This is an important finding because empathy plays an essential role in how we view the pain of others. This is particularly important when examining characteristics associated with bullying, as lack of empathy influences social relationships and interactions. In one study, participants were asked to evaluate pictures of various levels of pain (severe, moderate, and neutral) administered to hands and feet. These participants were also asked to imagine that the painful situation was either happening to them or someone else. Results of this study suggest that adolescents with Conduct Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and psychopathic traits show reductions in responsiveness in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex and right ventral striatum when perceiving pain. There were also reductions in amygdala and insula activity in response to the pain of others, but not to one's own pain.

It is evident that abnormal neural activity and how it is manifested through bullying behaviors needs to be further explored. Moving forward, exploring the neural activity of other parts of the brain, gender differences, and links between bullying and health could be most advantageous. Currently, the research addresses cognitive functioning as seen in aggression, psychopathic traits, and disorders such as oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder. This notwithstanding, it is important to keep in mind that there is little research to support direct links between bullying and neural activity, perhaps because bullying consists in various behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. Through the understanding of cognitive vulnerabilities we hope to be better able to create more efficient and targeted preventative and intervention programs to address issues related to bullying and cyberbullying.

In search of solutions: from legislations to psychological interventions and beyond

Considering that bullying is not a new phenomenon, the law in conjunction with schools and communities has been grappling with ways to reduce the harmful effects and prevalence of bullying. The recent rise in cyberbullying has now resulted in trends within legislation to create specific guidelines aimed at adequately addressing this issue. Currently, 45 states have laws on bullying and 22 have adopted cyberbullying statutes (Children's Safety Network, 2011). Moreover, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has devised a Model Anti-bullying Statute that combines elements of the existing laws with refinements to ensure that the statute is both comprehensive and constitutional. According to the ADL, some but not all states have adopted the components of ADL's statute into their legislation and fewer than half of the statutes or laws offer guidance as to whether or not schools may intervene in instances of cyberbullying (Anti-Defamation League, 2009).

Within the United States, legislation has been implemented to protect victims of bullying as well as to prevent future instances of bullying from occurring. Bullying has been addressed through laws within state's education codes as well as policies that provide guidance to districts and schools (stopbullying.gov). Moreover, each individual state addresses the issue of bullying differently, with some states addressing the issue through a single law while others may have multiple laws pertaining to bullying (stopbullying.gov). Some states have also included bullying within the criminal code that applies to juvenile offenders (stopbullying.gov) and with the definition of bullying within the laws varying state by state. Within some states (i.e., Hawaii, Maine, New Mexico, Virginia, and Wisconsin) the definition of bullying is left to be defined by the state department of education or similar entity, while in other states (i.e., Arizona and Minnesota) the definition is left up to the local school districts. For more detailed information pertaining to the specific bullying laws of each state, the reader is referred to http://www.stopbullying.gov.

What is emerging from the review of legislative attempts is the tremendous controversy surrounding finding effective legislative solutions to something that is too complicated and multifaceted to be addressed with enactment of new laws (good citizens cannot be made simply through good laws), with the exception of the most egregious acts of cyberbullying. One of the difficulties with a legislative approach is the difficulty to enact laws than can be properly reinforced and that provide enough and legally clear safeguards for issues related to the First Amendment (free speech), while adequately providing enough and clear deterrence to the types of behavior found in cyberbullying; and to do that without criminalizing cyberbullying behaviors that can be considered normal (albeit inappropriate) aspects of adolescent behaviors. The solution to cyberbullying is clearly multifaceted, and hence the need to consider the kind of multidisciplinary and multifaceted programmatic approaches presented in this special issue of the journal.

This is what we are attempting to provide with the next two contributions by Novick and by Kupferman and associates. These contributions provide more specific discussions about strategies that have been found to be effective in dealing with bullying behavior, with a number of important recommendations. The first contribution by Novick is entitled ‘Rewriting Tragedy: Understanding the Cast of Characters in the Bullying Drama.’ This article highlights how popular literature, film, and other media serve to engrain a concept of bullying in the society which is actually far from the truth. The popular misconceptions of bullies often seep into the culture of schools and communities which results in a failure to identify real life bullies and victims and can lead to misguided and ineffective interventions. It was her goal in this paper to address the issue of definition and to describe the current research on each character in the bullying drama (i.e., bullies, victims, and bystanders), from a variety of theoretical and methodological standpoints.

Novick explains how intrinsic characteristics, such as cognition and biological make-up, in combination with extrinsic characteristics, such as family dynamics, serve to play a role in the development of bullying behaviors. She recognizes that bullies are not all the same, as they are affected differently by culture, gender, temperament, and the complex interaction of them. This notwithstanding, in this paper she recognizes the importance of looking for commonalities in her attempt to promote a greater understanding and improve the development of interventions. Novick describes two subsets of victims that we need to consider at all times: (a) The passive victim and (b) those that respond with withdrawal and aggression or the ‘bully-victims’. She further discusses a variety of research which investigates what determines victim status and who is at risk for being targeted. An important part of her contribution is her emphasis on addressing the significance of the often forgotten ‘bystander’ in bullying episodes. In this context, she describes the specific factors that contribute to bystander behavior and emphasizes the value of creating a class or school climate that fosters the expectation of pro-social behavior. The discussion is intended to provide the readers with a sufficiently nuanced understanding that allows for improved interventions that protect victims, rehabilitate bullies, and engage bystanders in socially responsible behavior. The article concludes with a discussion of socioeconomic factors that surround bullying and the implications of this knowledge for policy makers, public institutions, and children and families.

The last manuscript by Kupferman and colleagues entitled ‘Bullying in Children and Adolescents—A Healthcare Perspective’ aims to increase pediatricians’ and mental health professionals’ awareness of the range of clinical manifestations of bullying in children and youth. Further, it seeks to describe the pervasiveness of the problem and educate individuals about the various ways in which bullying has infiltrated the lives of so many in our society. The article discusses bullying as a public health problem and serves to demystify the complex phenomenon by breaking it down into its various forms and types, such as physical, verbal, relational/social, and cyber or electronic.

Kupferman and colleagues provide an in-depth look at how various genetic, psychological, emotional, and social influences can affect risk factors and resiliency and influence the consequences of bullying in diverse individuals. In a world where bullying is so prevalent this information may help health care providers and mental health professionals to better identify and target children who are at a greater risk for developing problems following a bullying experience. The article identifies specific conditions that have been found to be particularly targeted by bullying, such as asperger's syndrome, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, learning disabilities, obesity, food allergies, and various mental health disorders. A summary of the increased prevalence of bullying in people with these conditions and a discussion of potential hypotheses regarding these findings are offered.

Since most pediatricians and mental health professionals agree that they should be playing an active role in the prevention of violence, the article serves to better prepare individuals to screen for and manage the condition by informing them of the signs, symptoms, and consequences of bullying. It also focuses on educating professionals about the most up-to-date programmatic interventions. Importantly, the article highlights specific programs, describes their implementation, identifies the goals of the program, and summarizes the research regarding their effectiveness in reducing bullying and promoting positive behaviors in a variety of different populations. By summarizing the research regarding the effects of bullying, intervention, and anti-bullying programs individuals can make more informed decisions about how to manage most effectively this pervasive problem.

Conclusion

Bullying is an unfortunate occurrence that must be eradicated from children's’ lives. The current generation has come to suffer more than their predecessors due to the evolution of bullying in the information age. Although civil rights laws have been in place for decades, it is only recently that we have seen a change within the legislation to address the growing concerns related to bullying. As the crisis surrounding bullying becomes greater, policymakers have begun to take a greater notice to the phenomenon of bullying. However, we recognize the limits of the laws and despite the changes which have begun to take place within the law, much more work must still be done to adequately address and ultimately eradicate the negative consequences and effects of bullying in general and cyberbullying in particular.

We have included two important contributions from Novick and from Kupferman and associates geared at offering some recommendations in our effort to encourage more active participation of the various sectors of our society in searching for more effective solutions. Technology can be beneficial toward that end, if used judiciously, especially with more proactive participation from parents, teachers, law enforcers, the legislators, etc. For instance, Moore's website was shut down thanks to the involvement of the community and is now being redirected to an anti-bullying website called ‘Bullyville.com’. Bullyville is a unique webpage that allows users to share their experiences as a bully, victim, or bystander. It offers a forum where parents can ask questions, bullied children can go for emotional support, and former bullies share their personal experiences. Interestingly, the website also offers support and assistance to those whose pictures have ended up on a revenge porn website. The website states that it will not only help to get your photo down but will also work toward getting the site in question down. The most unique aspect of the site is called ‘Bully Blast’; this is where individuals being bullied can put their bully on ‘blast’ so they can be held accountable for their actions. The victim is told to take a screenshot of the incident of bullying and bullyville will then post it on their website to expose the bully. The idea here is that bullies may be more likely to fear the consequences of bullying as they are no longer able to hide behind their screens. While at this point there is no way to tell if this website is in fact discouraging cyberbullying, it is a new and innovative spin on using media to battle bullying.

In a world where technology is constantly changing, it is difficult to keep up with and monitor the many ways cyberbullying is occurring; interestingly though, we also see many unique methods of tackling bullying. For instance, one new program by Blackboard known as TipTxt provides students with a free and confidential way to tell school officials that they are being bullied or have witnessed bullying (Elliott, 2013). The program allows students to send a confidential text and the report is then forwarded to school officials. This is a great option as in the past many students may have been too reserved and afraid to face a school official in person and thus they have failed to report it.

At the end, the extent to which we are successful in eradicating the issue of bullying in all its forms will depend on developing successful intervention and preventive programs, and creating an atmosphere in the home and school environments where our children can develop high moral standards and as good and responsible citizens. It is our hope that through these efforts cyberbullying and bullying in general will become a thing of the past.