Entire High School Football Team Gets Suspended Because of Cyberbullying on Ask.fm

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Union High School Football Coach Suspends His Entire Team For Cyberbullying on Ask.fmIt’s not often that I offer a big “WELL DONE” to high school or college athletics in connection with a story about bullying of any kind. This might be the first time….hopefully not the last….

Matt Labrum, the head football coach at Union High School in Roosevelt, Utah found out that a non-football player at his school was being bullied via the (very popular among tweens and teens) social media site Ask.fm.

For those of you who might not have heard, Ask.fm has been in the news many times in connection with cyberbullying and teen suicides. ASk.fm has been linked to the suicides of four teens in the UK and one in the United States.

The premise of Ask.fm is quite simple. Here is a sample scenario.

  1. A user creates a profile (most kids use their real names and location – which is dumb, obviously)
    For this example we’ll call her Sally Smith from Topeka Kansas
  2. Another user can ask the first user any question at all anonymously
    Another user we’ll call Jenny Jones from Topeka Kansas
  3. Jenny goes onto Sally’s Ask.Fm page and posts a question – questions like the following are extremely common on Ask.fm
    * Why are you such a whore?
    * Why don’t you kill yourself?
    * Do your parents hate you as much as everyone else?
  4. Sally does not know who is posting the question

The real danger of Ask.fm is in the anonymity of its structure. You never really quite know who is posting the question, and therein lies the problem. Tweens and teens feel free to post whatever they like, safe in the knowledge that there will never be any consequences. Or so it would seem.

NOTE: Ask.fm is a really really bad idea for tweens and teens

In the Union High School example, once the head football coach found out that a non-football player was being bullied on Ask.fm he suspended the entire team. All 80 players on the team were forced to turn in all of their equipment and do a week’s worth of community service instead of practicing before a big game at the end of the week.

Yes the suspension only lasted one week, and yes they never missed a game. HOWEVER, I appreciate this coach for making it clear to these young men that bullying behavior would not be tolerated on his team.

This is really the bigger point:

Your children listen very closely when you make their lives stop on a dime. Monitor what they are doing online – learn what to look for. Then deliver the consequences…loudly and consistently.

I promise that it will make a difference.

Internet Safety for Parents: Being proactive is the only defense for your tweens, teens, and family

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Internet Safety Class for ParentsI’ve been teaching Internet Safety for almost 10 years now.

In the beginning (when the dinosaurs roamed) the big issues came as a result of the unchecked activity on AOL chat rooms.  Chat rooms have always been fertile ground for would-be child sex predators.

We send our children off to their bedrooms with wi-fi and a laptop, tablet, or phone and consider them safe. They’re in their jammies after all.

What could *possibly* go wrong with handing a pubescent (or younger) child with a device which enables them unrestricted access to a global community of strangers and constant requests for their personal information?

The level of sophistication of social media platforms, multimedia devices (tablets and laptops), gaming systems (XBox Live), and of course telephones make connecting to anyone and everyone as easy as pushing a button.

Your single and only chance to protect yourself and your children is to become educated. New apps and social media platforms spring up literally daily and we have to keep up. 

Over the years I have taught large groups (a few hundred at a time), and I’ve been asked by families to come do a “house visit” and reason with a child showing the beginning of at-risk behavior. I can put everything I’ve observed into two separate buckets:

  • Trust but verify
    Please spare me the “I have a good kid” speech. I’m sure you do. Congratulations. You must be very proud. In the meantime, assume he’s guilty and cross-examine him like he knows where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.     Because I can pretty much guarantee that given the right circumstances he is not beyond taking a picture of his junk and texting it. Seriously.
  • Know the answer to your question before you ask it
    Don’t ask your daughter if she’s using SnapChat. Snoop through her IPhone, confirm she’s using SnapChat, and THEN ask her if she’s using it. If her answer doesn’t perfectly match the intelligence you gathered, we have a problem. But to achieve this step you *must get educated*

Being one step ahead is the only shot we collectively have of coming out the other end of this mine field alive.  Education is the only option – I know it’s time consuming and you might not be a techy person and (waaa waaa waaa) it’s just so hard, but it is what it is.

The train is coming whether we like it or not. You can get run over, let it roll past you, or hop on board. Oh, and by the way – your kids are on the train…but they didn’t notice you standing there because they were texting at the time.

Get on board people!