People used to know who their bullies were. Cyberbullying — when people hide behind computer and phone screens to torment others — has changed that. And as online harassment becomes more deeply embedded in a society dependent on digital technology, some government officials in states and cities are looking for a legal way to stop it.
However well-intentioned, laws that criminalize bullying and cyberbullying aren’t an effective solution, says Nicholas Carlisle, the founder of No Bully, a leading anti-bullying advocacy group.
The laws, he said, are “an aggressive approach to solve a problem that is essentially one of aggression.”
Such legislative efforts reflect growing frustration about bullying and cyberbullying — the focus of a Patch national reporting project — and the sometimes lifelong toll it takes on one in three U.S. school children. About 160,000 kids skip school every day to avoid their bullies. A survey last year by the Pew Research Center found 59 percent of teens ages 13 to 17 had been bullied or harassed online at some point, and a similar share think cyberbullying is a major problem for people their age.
It’s not just the targeted kids who are hurt by bullying, Carlisle said.
“There’s a correlation between bullying and higher rates of aggression, higher rates of criminality in the late teens and early 20s, and moral disengagement — the mindset that some students have that bullying is OK, and the targets somehow deserve to be treated this way,” he said. “It is important to turn around the behavior of the bullying student. Bullying is not a great life skill.”
‘Easy To Blame Parents’
Dearborn, Michigan, is among the latest U.S. cities to make cyberbullying a misdemeanor offense, punishable by up to 93 days in jail and a $500 fine. The law in the Detroit suburb isn’t limited to cyberbullying of youths, and doesn’t have a parental liability clause.
The idea of parental liability anti-bullying laws has been kicked around for several years, but made headlines again this summer when two small towns in Wisconsin began working with a local school district to pass laws sending a message to bullied kids that they have a strong ally, and to parents that they bear some of the responsibility for their children’s behavior.
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The idea behind the laws in Wisconsin Rapids and Grand Rapids isn’t to make parents pay huge fines or serve jail sentences, but rather to persuade them to talk to their kids about how they’re treating others and the dreadful toll bullying can take. The laws are modeled after those Plover, Wisconsin, Police Chief Dan Ault convinced his village council to pass in 2015. He had done the same thing in 2014 when he was the police chief in Oconto, Wisconsin.
In both cities, the threat of a fine was enough and no citations have been issued, Ault told Patch earlier this year.
“This isn’t us telling you how to raise your children,” he said. “It’s us begging you to raise your children.”
North Tonawanda, New York, officials heard of Ault’s approach. The town has had a similar law on its books since 2017. State legislatures are increasingly doing the same. New Jersey’s proposed Mallory’s Law, named after the 12-year-old girl who killed herself to escape relentless online cyberbullying, would open parents to civil liability. Other proposals, like one floated in Pennsylvania, are similar to local ordinances that can make criminals of parents whose kids repeatedly bully.
Carlisle, the No Bully founder, says it’s “easy to blame the parents,” but said parental liability laws are counter-productive and may produce the opposite of the desired result.
“I think it’s an example of schools passing the buck,” Carlisle said. “The question becomes whether threatening the parents of bullying students turns them into your allies who will then seek to turn around the behavior of that child. On that, I think the jury is very much out.
“There’s no research or case studies I’m aware of that show that as a universal strategy is successful.”
He said it’s “human nature to get defensive about one’s own child.”
“Most parents of bullies do not identify that child as a bully,” said Carlisle, who has been involved in anti-bullying advocacy work for 15 years and has given thousands of parent workshops across the country.
“If you label a child a bully or a problem, you just create animosity,” he said. “The problem with legislation like this is that it turns parents into enemies. In 90 percent of the cases, the parents say that child did not start it and that child is not a bully. There’s no research that shows it will work, with parents or kids involved in a particular incident.”
No Bully Partnerships In 400 School Districts
Carlisle said No Bully’s research shows “school is the primary lever for turning bullying around.”
About 400 No Bully school partnerships in more than a dozen states involve administration, staff, parents and students. Carlisle says the programs have a 90 percent success rate in solving bullying situations as they arise and preventing future bullying.
“On the prevention side, the focus is on creating an inclusive school climate,” he said. “On the response side, use a solution team or something similar to resolve bullying incidents as they occur.”
No Bully’s programs focus on building empathy among students. In one exercise, the kids who bully and pro-social kids are brought together to talk about the problem.
“We tell them they’re not in trouble, and walk them in the shoes of the students who are being bullied,” Carlisle said, adding “98 percent of kids are wired for empathy, and they have a profound sense of fairness.”
“If you create the right conditions, they will step in to end the bullying,” he said. “It nips it right there.”
Carlisle said changing a school climate is “an intense piece of work,” but as “important to student success as the walls, roofs and building” because “learning cannot really happen if you do not have a good, positive climate.”
Schools that invest in turning around a culture of bullying not only see a significant reduction in bullying, he said, but also an 11 percent improvement in their academic results, he said.
The one-year program costs $15,000, but Carlisle said nearby schools can save “considerable” money by grouping together.
“It’s not a lot of money when you’re thinking about saving lives and preventing the suffering that bullying causes for so many students,” he said.
Add to that increasing lawsuits filed against schools by parents whose children are bullied, and the investment makes more sense, Carlisle said.
“Those are always sad situations,” he said, “but I’m so glad that, overall, parents are putting pressure on schools to make sure schools are bully-free.”
Carlisle is encouraged by progress in curbing bullying, and says the “people are waking up to the fact that it really does ruin the lives of children.”
“There are positive signs: Pretty much every school recognizes that bullying is not OK and has a policy around it, and parents are holding schools accountable and making sure their child is not bullied,” he said, adding, though, “I wish we were making quicker progress.”
Menace Of Bullies: Patch Advocacy Reporting Project
As part of a national reporting project, Patch has been looking at society’s roles and responsibilities in bullying and a child’s unthinkable decision to end their own life in hopes we might offer solutions that save lives.
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