Ashley’s Weblog

So I haven’t blogged in a really long time…or so it seems. The last post I made was last week about my youtube video I posted. I feel like I am lost in my own world sometimes with everything that is going on and I sometimes find it difficult to find 15 minutes to sit down and blog (or find articles to blog on for that matter). Thankfully Alecgave us a bunch of ideas to blog about. I decided to write about a youtube video on cyberbullyingfound on Alecs blog. The video was originally aired on ABC. You can find the video below.

This video discusses a case in which a 15 year old boy was teased by a group of students at school about being gay after he received a rectal examine in the emergency room. A group of girls began to lead him on over the internet making him think they had a crush on him. After he believed this, they began to tell him that they were too good for him and would never date anyone like him. This could have been the beginning of the end results. However, there was another form of online communication going on. Ryan was having online conversations with a boy who was obsessed with death. These conversations helped influence Ryan to actually commit suicide.

Ryan’s dad eventually found out who was talking to Ryan about killing himself and contacted the parents of the boy. He was disappointed to find that the parents were in denial. When I heard this, it made me think about how big of an impact parents have on their kids lives. These parents chose to not believe what their son was doing, and were obviously not involved enough with their child to know what he was doing.

Today, some parents are more wrapped up in their own lives then their children’s. I believe that the way parents raise their kids has a big influence on how they will turn out when they are grown up. Parents need to instill values and beliefs in their children that will help them become a member of society.

Ryan’s dad made a comment that really stuck out in my mind. That was “My biggest mistake was buying Ryan that computer”. Perhaps the bigger mistake was not informing Ryan about the types of things that can happen over the internet. A computer can be extremely useful for homework and school among other things. But as the media has shown us, it can also lead to many problems with cyberbullying.

I guess the one thing we can learn from this video is that parents should try keep up with what their students are doing on the internet. Of course it is pretty much impossible to know what you child is doing every time they are on the internet.

Basically after seeing this and thinking about what our kids do on the internet, I was trying to come up with ways that we might prevent something like this from happening.

1. No Computers in Bedrooms – with the computer in a common area of the house, children will be less likely to go to sites that may be inappropriate, or engage in conversations that are inappropriate. Perhaps once the children are out of high school they can get a computer in their room.

2. Check History – if you can access your child’s computer, get snoopy. Check the history.

3. Awareness – for both you and your children. Get information on cyberbullying, what can happen in chat rooms and where to go if something should happen.

I am not a parent, so I don’t know how well any of these would work. But it wouldn’t hurt to think about it and give them a shot!