“Be Best” campaign lacks real solutions to cyberbullying

Gabriella Pinos/Staff Writer

Social media has become the norm for kids growing up, and you don’t have to look to hard to notice it.

While 3-year-olds with iPads are common nowadays, the fanatical tween on popular social media sites such as Instagram, Snapchat or Musical.ly is even more prevalent.

In fact, 90 percent of teens ages 13 to 17 have used social media, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. And these numbers are continuing to increase.

Although connecting with the rest of the world at a young age is great, it’s something that worries parents and politicians alike.

Forms of online negativity such as cyberbullying are especially concerning. Over 20 percent of kids between 10 to 12 years old have experienced or seen bullying and trolling on social media, according to BBC.

It’s an issue that’s easy for adults to ignore, but online aggression can make a child feel cornered and scared. Increased access to the Internet has only made it more difficult to avoid this form of harassment and simultaneously, made it easier for kids to partake in it.

Most recently, First Lady Melania Trump has stepped in to prevent negative online behavior in her new initiative, “Be Best,” where she focuses on major issues facing children in America.

One of the pillars of her campaign involves social media use, specifically targeting cyberbullying.

The initiative sounds promising on paper, and it’s nice to see that the First Lady wants to encourage children in this way.

However, despite her best intentions, Trump is not clear as to how she plans to put these ideas into effect, at least not yet. In the meantime, it seems that Be Best will do nothing more than poke at the surface of cyberbullying prevention.

At its core, cyberbullying is fueled by kids who have the freedom to use technology at their whim.

With so many opinions flooding their eardrums, and with social media’s safety blanket of anonymity, it’s not hard to see why they resort to online aggression. It’s only inevitable that some teens will use the Internet for negative purposes.

Trump suggests combating cyberbullying by educating families about its effects. However, many of these points, which come from a pamphlet from the Federal Trade Commission titled “Talking with Kids about Being Online,” focus more on security habits and privacy.

It’s important to talk about these issues to kids, but children often ignore these security measures when online.

For instance, despite most social networks requiring a minimum age of 13 to create an account, many kids lie and claim to be older. 78 percent of kids under 13 uses at least one social media network, and proof of ID is rarely asked when creating an account, according to BBC.

It seems like the real meat of Be Best’s social media pillar is more about informing parents rather than kids about online behavior. In actuality, just one of the 26 pages of the brochure is dedicated toward cyberbullying.

While the other Be Best pillars sound promising on their own, the information on Trump’s website is still too vague to make a clear judgement about them.

The initiative as it stands barely acknowledges the root of cyberbullying, and unfortunately, no government program can get rid of all negative online behaviors.

What I don’t want Trump to do in the future with her campaign is misunderstand why online negativity exists among kids.

Stopping cyberbullying has nothing to do with the hardware or social network itself, but with the people behind the computer screen.

Rude and abusive behavior is more than an act of rebellion, it’s a defense mechanism for bullies.

Many of them harass their peers to suppress any negative feelings they may have toward themselves, according to Psychology Today. Others bully due to problems at home, such as a lack of attention from parents, according to STOMP Out Bullying.

And while this isn’t an excuse to pity cyberbullies, it’s important to know that they usually don’t realize their behavior is wrong in the first place. If the people closest to them can’t recognize or be proactive about these issues, then bullying in all its forms will continue to surge.

There is no clear cure for cyberbullying other than disciplining kids and teaching them proper respect toward others.

Talking to bullies and letting them release their emotions through healthy habits or hobbies would do more good than making a blanket statement about the benefits of online positivity.

Funding for school and community programs where kids can play and work with each other would promote kindness at a local level.

If “Be Best”, once it’s more fleshed out, can make this happen, then it will be a vessel for positive online behavior as it claims to be.

For now, we’ll just have to wait and see if the First Lady can deliver on her promises. From the looks of it, Trump’s heart is in the right place, but unless she gets specific about her tactics, she won’t get very far.

 

DISCLAIMER:

The opinions presented within this page do not represent the views of Panther Press Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect individual perspectives of contributing writers and/or members of the University community.

 

Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash.

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