By LIZ CAREY
Scripps Howard News Service The printouts read like alphabet soup, except for some key words. Between the "lol" (laughing out loud or lots of luck-love) and the "OMG" (Oh my god) there's reference to beating people up and "shoot them all."
The transcript of an Internet chat between two South Carolina high school girls seems almost incomprehensible. But some of the messages have clear meanings: threats, verbal assaults and allusions to fights.
Bullying has moved into cyberspace. Now bullies are able to reach out and touch others in new ways.
"It's not just text messaging," said Mickie Morton, assistant principal of Pendleton High School in Anderson, S.C. "It's MySpace, it's Facebook, it's instant messaging. It can happen anywhere."
Cyberbullying has become one of the top disciplinary issues facing school administrators across the country.
"It's a new modality for bullying," said Susan Limber, professor with the Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life at Clemson University. "The characteristics are the same - there's an imbalance of power, and it's repeated over time."
Anderson County Sheriff's Deputy Matt Szymanski, who works on campus at Pendleton High, said one student threatened to beat another so badly that the other "would beg for mercy." Both students are girls. The text message was sent during a math class.
"It's a threat, and we have to deal with it. We have to take it seriously," Morton said. "When we get a report of something, we have to address it."
According to statistics from I-Safe, a national, nonprofit organization focused on Internet safety for children based in California, a survey of 1,500 children in fourth through eighth grades, 42 percent of respondents reported being bullied online. Twenty-one percent said they had received mean or threatening e-mail or other messages.
It's called cyberbullying, or net bullying, and it's a growing problem, experts said.
According to
netbullies.com, a Web site operated by Parry Aftab, a cyberabuse attorney dedicated to protecting children on the Internet, net bullying is abuse, humiliation, embarrassment or threatening of a child by another child through electronic communications like cell phones, Web sites, social networking sites and discussion boards.
"Sometimes the bullying takes place through the use of a Web site where the victims are ridiculed by being voted the ugliest, fattest or most sexually active student in the school," the netbullies.com site says. "Sometimes cell phone cameras are used to take pictures of the victim in a locker room or dressing room or in an otherwise compromising situation. Their faces may be superimposed on pornographic images."
