The good news is there are usually no physical scars from cyberbullying. The bad news is there are usually no physical scars to alert parents to what’s going on. And that’s not even the biggest problem with cyberbullying: “that children will not report it,” reports CNET, citing a new academic book on the subject, Cyber Bullying: Bullying in the Digital Age, by Patricia Agatston, a licensed counselor and consultant on bullying, psychology Prof. Robin Kowalski at Clemson University, and Sue Limber, director of the Center on Youth Participation and Human Rights at Clemson. Rather than report cyberbullying, kids “try to deal with it themselves for fear of being cut off. Many times parents will overreact and punish the victim by forbidding them to continue using things like instant messaging, blogs, or a social network.” Overreaction and overprotection are increasingly risky these days because of the damage they can do to parent-child communication in a time when the Web is so ubiquitous on so many devices in so many places, and communication with caring adults is the most reliable protection kids have.
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