It was 2006, and I was a first year teacher who found myself in the midst of it; two of my students had created a fake Myspace page about me, and from what I heard (I never looked at the page quite frankly), what they were saying on there was not nice.  Although I was not all that upset (they were just kids, and I was a new teacher, making me a likely candidate for such a prank), I tried to imagine what I would have felt like had I been a seventh grader when this happened.  I think I would have been mortified. 

From what I heard that year, I was not the only one that these students had targeted.  I thought about the dangers of cyberbullying, the destruction that it would do to these young students' self esteem, and more importantly, the way it could effect these students' mental health.  You don't have to go too far back in the news to see how cyberbullying can be deleterious, if not fatal to young people.  Need I remind us all of the tragic Rutgers incident last year where Tyler Clementi took his life after other students broadcasted his sexual encounter with another male student?

So, how do we address this with our children?  MTV has a new internet resource, A Thin Line, which addresses this very topic.  Full of links to resources and ideas for young people on how to handle cyberbullying, this website is extremely youth and user friendly.  I highly recommend that you take a look for yourself, and also pass this link along to your children: http://www.athinline.org/. 

Be Well
~Emily