% >> bullying has been around as long as the school yard as it moves from the school to the cyber space world, the severity is alarming. >> the house is so quiet now and it's hard to deal with. >> the rights of the bullies and the reality, straight ahead on equal time. >> you are watching equal time, exploring new issues each week, good hello from the campus of san jose state university. and welcome, to this edition of equal time. i'm your host, bob rucker. these days technology plays a major role in young people's

lives. but it can cause untold hurt. fernando lopez reports to consequences of cyber bullying. >> you open your eyes -- >> this is an unusual morning for these two girls. one girl attempted suicide. >> when the principal called me, he said are you sitting down and i said no, do i have to be and he said yet. and i said what is going on and he said that amanda tried to hang her and she was going to the hospital and i needed to get there. >> the reason for the attempt? cyber bullying. amanda was getting hate messages from former friends and classmates. the mother can did not know what was happening until

earlier that week. >> she finally admitted that these two girls were bullying her. >> she wrote it was hard it had to end this way and yes it was a suicide -- and yes it was a suicide. >> the last person to see her talked to her about her sitting to floor writing in her journal. >> after being found bay classmate, paramedics rushed her to the hospital where she was in critical care. >> they are vulnerable, and that creates potential for danger. >> a professor said that it's social status. >> as kids increase their status in the school, they get more and more aggressive.

when they get to the top, the levels of aggression declines, that means that the kids are viewing this as a way to kind of gain status. >> more than half of young teens admit to having harassed others on line. >> people are willing to say something rude if they can do it through messaging on facebook or texts. it's something they would not necessarily say in person. >> a professor said what the problem goes beyond cyber space. it's a problem but not a technology problem. that is why i do not like the term cyber bullying much. it's a behavior problem. >> officer dwyre said he takes the complaint on a case by case

basis. >> those that make a credible threat within the school, that is a crime. that is a misdemeanor in california. >> cyber bullying is continuing to be a problem and parents are questioning who is in charge. >> the school was not helpful. >> this mom has experience with getting law enforcement involved. her child was cyber bullied on a social media site and had a hard time getting the school to react. >> they said there's no signs of danger or bull i having even though -- or bullying even though the statements were that they were going to kill him or cut his arms off or just horrible things. >> when we come back, we will talk about how parents and schools and officials are getting involved with cyber

bullying. we look at one victim's mother is doing now. >> together we can make the change happen. >> and how the community has come together when equal time returns. . , % schools and parents are becoming more and more educated

about the world their children live in. continuing our report. here is fernando lopez. >> we have to change everyone's thoughts in how they -- >> this is this mother's life now, she talked about when her daughter was cyber bullied and tried to create suicide. >> we need to share her story and let people know that words hurt. our focus is more on having everybody that i share this story with take the pledge to stop bullying. stop allowing bullying to happen in their presence. together, we can make what change happen. >> she works closely with maria hunt who had a son that was

cyber bullied. >> it takes us all to make the change. that is why i go to any school that wants me to come out. >> she wishes to tell amanda's story even hoe that brings back the hurt and that hurt is that many of the community are fighting to prevent. >> our mission is to help people be smart, be accountable and be safe so they can navigate freely in that environment, rather than withdrawing from it. >> schools are beginning to take an active role against cyber bullying. >> i feel that it's something that our schools are more honest and urgently addressing. it was all new and i do not think they realized it would

have this powerful of an impact in their schoollies. >> they want to create a culture that teaches youth about respect for one another. she said that schools should take advantage of programs that promote respect. project corner stone is a website, ann is the executive director promoting community resources for youth. how do we build the literacy of youth so they can deal with conflict in a healthy way and how do they develop skills that translate to the classroom and the school yards and into their online personality as well. >> volunteers make presentations at schools and give them tools to help the students avoid harassment. >> what we believe is that if we can help them gain the social skills that they need at

an early age as they enter into the cyber realm. they will carry the values with them. >> the center ville police department said that law enforcement can help. >> they have to keep an eye on the dynamics of the kids and they bring it to our attention and we go out and have a talk with the kids involved and try to get to the bottom of it before it gets worse. >> the police address cyber bullying on a case by case basis. >> kids are more savy online than parents. parents you need to have a facebook account and know their pass words and be their friends

on the facebook. >> it is her top priority. >> my motivation is to help keep other families from going through the hell that we are continuing to go through every day. not having her at home, not having her be around us. and you know, singing and dancing and telling jokes and i feel like she will wake up and talk to me. >> we sit down with a panel of experts in search of solutions. stay with us. ,

% welcome back to equal time from the campus of san jose state university. today our focus is on cyber bullies. and i have an interesting panel that you want you to meet. i'm kelly from project corner stone. i'm from the university of davis. >> i think you all for being here. cyber bullies, we no what bullies are. how did it become a cyber bully concern? >> cyber bullying is easy to do because you are at home, in

your own private space and you can say whatever you want. a lot easier to do it from there than face to face. >> some people are good people and do not cause problems and then there are peoples that are bullies. how do we deal with them? >> i have been a bully in my life and i wonder if you have too. i have been on the wrong end of the curve a couple of times. using bad language, excluding others, i feel like we need to be careful about labeling. face to face good citizen ship is what we need to worry about. >> we are all human and make mistakes. robert help me with this. tell me more about the psychology of this. >> my focus is more on the broader school environment and our research suggests that what predicts a kid's level of

aggressive behavior is where they sit in the school pecking order. kids that are seemingly normal kids, they and it makes de-- kippeds that are dekids -- the kids impulsive, we as parented were surprised, our kids were way ahead of us. right? they are out there exploring and experimenting and we stood by and said they are doing okay and we do not understand it anyway. but what is happening is we have gone through a real shocking awakening, and an

awakening that these mobile devices while powerful and bring education and make a very engaging experience, there's a lot of concerns that is happening. we are discovering it through the results of cyber bullying. which is unfortunately rather common. >> i'm thinking, all right, human nature, we have had bullies and now we have a technology that mass produces it on a scale that can be hurtful and damaging to the society. how do we stop it. you cannot spank them on the hand and say do not do it again, what do you do? >> it can happen 24/7, day and night, so i tell parents the kids do not need their phones to wake up or their computers and they can take that away. , the kids can say my phone will be taken away at 10:00 and so do not bother texting me or

calling me. >> there are parents that say i cannot do that. >> sure you can. you are responsible for them. they need to get their sleep. and i know with my daughter, i would let her go to bed with my laptop. who knows -- i know she was getting text messages all day and night. >> you think it was not something what you should have done? >> no, i tell everyone, that if you are a parent and you are not sure what is happening to them on line or what they are doing online, you need to get involved and ask them. even though i have my kids pass words and log ins and all of that and we talked about all of the stuff, when you go online what you put out there is out there forever. do not give your address or any of that -- >> you have to go further and get involved with it more. >> you are talking about connection. connection and belonging is

what young people, and let's admit it what we are all looking for in our relationships. guiding kids with giving them multiple systems of report. at schools and in our youth programs so that they have someone to turn to for live advice. empowerment and how to use the tool in a safe and responsible manner. >> we have all these mobile devices and it's a powerful time in our world. we have students publishing, sharing their ideas, and so i think it's a real critical moment, what you said there, it's important for us to tap these devices and this kind of communication interaction and do harnessing, i do not mean limitations, they need guidelines and they need to be educated we need to build a culture of support and ethics.

it does not stop with the kids. the teachers and administrators and parents need to be educated. we need a culture of ethics and safety. we have at the counties of, we have realized how compelling a need this is to really guide our educators and our community in how to best prepare and create an environment where we are using these great devices and we are good citizens. we partnered with yahoo safely. and this was our 4th summit. annual summit and our message is to bring together all these nonprofit experpetrates from i safely, common sense i can't -- common sense media, and bring in the message of access with

citizenry. >> this sounds good but is it working in the academic world? >> there's a lot of programs out there and they are being refined and improving, but a lot of programs have had mixed success or no success at all. and that is unfortunate, i tend to think that any you know, in every study of bullying that i've seen, the majority of kids are not involved, if you are going to be successful at preventing this, you cannot just focus on the kids that are bullying or the kids that are victims. you need to address that majority of kids that are watching it happen. >> and not saying anything. >> failing to prevent it. they have the power in the schools. they have the influence in the schools by their numbers. >> students in high school and college do not want to take that responsibility. how do we encourage that? >> let me tell you about a phrase that is used in project

corner stone throughout the county. called up standard. the idea is to move from the passive upsetting role of bi- stander, of i can help you to get away and give you the support and include you when you are involved in a bullying situation. ann you have done such a good job of getting the word out about the emotional toll. let's step back and look at the -- let's step back and look at the prevention. >> we need to align the policies and responsible youth policies that everyone, the parts and the kids sign, it has to go deeper than that. we talk about content, we have

excellent programs available. in k-12 it's in the classroom day. and we are training our professional developers and administrators. we had a training program at the counties of. we had a full strand on citizenry and we gave them the kind of resources to take back. we must educate throughout the whole spectrum, that is how we start changing the culture. >> you are doing that on a personal basis. >> what i do is i talk to the kids, i tell them each and every one of you have the power to make that change to not allow bullying in your presence. if you do not report it you are just as guilty. so we have that in several different languages and we have the kids sign a pledge to do that, and i tell them, that they can save someone's life. they do not know what when they hear, or someone tells their friend, even though they are just kidding, you are so gay,

you look terrible, who dressed you, you cannot say those words anymore. you did not know if what is the breaking point for that person to want to go home and say i don't want to be here anymore if that is all i'm going to get. >> you can never assess the stability level of a person. >> that shared responsibility in the entire community, the focus cannot be on the 7-year- old to take that responsibility. so let's step back. kids in middle school and high school tell us that 30% of them have good family communication at home. 30%. >> that is what i thought i had. >> 25% of kids in middle school and high school say they have a caring school climate. that tells me we as a community are not reaching out to kids in a substantial way.

their perception is their reality. if we have laws in place to combat bullying but we are not having conversations about who to contact and how to contact these people, and i am one of those people that i need to you come to in a time of need. >> it's important that they have a full plan in place. it's like a incident response flow. when something happens, how do we respond, is it high alert or can we handle it more informally. i think that districts need to think through, how they are going to respond. i think it's so critical, so we have awakened and understand that there's a wonderful resource and access and environment of the internet but we need to come back and articulate and understand, how to we respond and be pro active rather than reactive. >> that is the question that a lot of parents are thinking.

this all sounds good, how do i know they are doing it and what to i do to stop it and how do i know they understand what they are doing. >> this is a suggestion. let sit down for a family meal and commit to a family meal for 3-4 times a week. this is my chance as an adult to give my values and talk about how i handle difficult situations and talk about social complexities that are giving me worries and we can brain storm together, because their many correct responses to the many difficult responses that our children find themselves in. >> that sounds good but my child is not like that. i did not have to we are about that, i taught my child better than that. that is an issue with the parent. >> connecting with young people is everybody's job. a well connect family what is not concerned at all about cyber bullying that is going on

in their house. ann can tell you that there's conversations that need to happen even in a great family like hers. >> the broadcast kiddid a good job of putting the story together in the beginning. tell us what you are doing? >> it was starting with sharing her story and the kids at the high school, say he really em powered me and even though they have been doing antiñ bullying programs and things their whole school year, and for the last six years with the program. it was not until i came and told them amanda's story and because i was a parent and cried and showed pictures of what she was like before and what she was like after and how

she was and look at all the friends she had. how the this happen? >> you have internalized a lot of that and have strong emotions. >> of course. i feel lucky that amanda is still here but it's not the same girl. >> her life changed. >> of course. but there are parents that do not have their kids anymore. one of the slides that i show during the powerpoint shows 20 different kids, all difference races and all different ages, they are no longer here because of bullying or the thought that they were either gay or lesbian or transgender or whatever. that is what caused them to go over to that point of no return. >> and the isolation, the teamings of isolation that a young person has when they are

being bullied. face to face or in the cyber realm. this is a silence that needs to be broken. that is exactly what you are doing in these communities. by opening the door and sharing your experiences, andrew hill students and the countless others that you have touched have learned that they are not alone and together our voice can be loud. >> that is why i bring other kids with me when i go to speak to the different groups. because they tried to commit suicide or yes, i've taken a lot of pills. and had to have my stomach pumped and yes, i've been cutting my arms to the point where i cannot stand the pain but i can see the blood on my arms. or drinking too much or driving

crazy. you know. >> of course. say it likity. >> robert help me with this, schools and administration and researchers can do a lot. >> i am a parent, i'm an educator, i think i'm smart, i did not know what to do with my own son. i feel it's critical. we said the word education. i mean, honestly i need step 1- 3, what do i need to do? and there are so so many resources and this is totally

government and free. it says bulkorder.ftc.gov and it's free. >> i thank you all for sharing your stories. thank you for being with us for another edition of equal time.