9 Cyberbullying Terms for School Leaders to Know for Effective Risk Management

Due to the unique characteristics of the online environment, many professionals in the education space believe that cyberbullying is an even greater threat to the health and well-being of students than traditional bullying—and much harder to combat. It is extremely challenging for teachers, school administrators, family members, and many others concerned with children’s safety to quickly and effectively detect and address bullying events that occur in the digital world for the following reasons:

• A cyberbully can remain anonymous since the harassment doesn’t involve face-to-face interaction, making it an easier and more desensitized way to bully someone.
• Cyberbullying has the potential for much broader audiences—and thus further embarrassment for the victim—because it is done so publicly, and the content can spread to others rapidly.
• Online harassment can happen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and from close proximity or far away, making it nearly impossible for a victim to find a safe space.
• Bullying content is more difficult to remove or delete forever as opposed to, for example, a message written in a note or graffiti.
• Cyberbullies rarely plan out their attacks and often act impulsively, so it is hard to predict when an attack is coming and where it will appear.
• There are many different methods that cyberbullies can use to harass their targets, and these tactics are constantly evolving with technological advances.

Today, our Education Practice Group wants to provide insight into some of the most common types of digital harassment your students may face daily. Being knowledgeable about the following nine terms is a critical first step toward better recognizing the signs of cyberbullying and identifying effective risk management strategies that can help minimize occurrences of a behavior that is detrimental to everyone involved.

1. Cyberstalking: has many of the same characteristics as physical stalking, with the cyberstalker watching, following, monitoring, and harassing their target—but now they’re doing it online. The goal of the cyberstalker is typically to control, possess, scare, isolate, and potentially harm the victim. If the aggressor and the victim are actually in an intimate relationship, this type of stalking behavior is often referred to as electronic dating violence (EDV). Some of the typical bullying tactics used by cyberstalkers include:
   • Monitoring a student's online activity to collect information about their whereabouts, often with the intent of showing up at the student’s location.
   • Searching a student’s social media for personal details about them.
   • Texting a student numerous times per day to tell them they’re being watched.
   • Posting about a student on social media incessantly and without permission.
   • Hacking into a student’s online accounts to read their emails or change their passwords, thereby locking them out of accounts.
2. Deepfakes: are manipulated videos, audio, or images that use a type of artificial intelligence called “deep” machine learning. Deepfake technology is so advanced that most of us would not be able to tell the content was faked, altered, or created by a computer. A cyberbully may use this technology to make bogus videos of a fellow student engaged in activities, often of a pornographic nature, or to alter a real image of a classmate to make it look like a nude photo. Then, they circulate these images and videos to all their peers online.
3. Dissing: involves a cyberbully sending or posting rumors and false information about a fellow student via public posts or direct messages with the intent of ruining the target’s reputation, damaging their friendships, and isolating them from their social circle.
4. Doxxing: happens when a cyberbully leaks another student’s private information, such as their full name, home address, phone number, email, or even a photo, online without the target’s consent. A form of doxxing called outing is when a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation is revealed publicly, sometimes in the form of pictures, video, or screenshots. Both doxxing and outing are serious invasions of a student's privacy that can cause the victim an unbearable amount of embarrassment.
5. Exclusion: occurs when a targeted student is deliberately left out of an online forum, chat room, social media platform, message thread, or event, or is suddenly uninvited from them. The intent is to make the student feel alone, rejected, and unimportant.
6. Fraping: is when a cyberbully hacks into another student’s social media accounts and posts inappropriate content, like humiliating photos, offensive comments, or false information. Since it appears to their peers that the posts are from the victim, it can have serious consequences for the bullied student, including damage to their reputation and relationships, and extreme embarrassment and humiliation. Masquerading is a similar form of cyberbullying, except the attacker creates a fake online profile of the classmate in order to impersonate them and post false and harmful content.
7. Sexting: the act of sending or receiving sexually explicit or suggestive messages, images, or video through the internet or mobile phone, is an increasingly common behavior among teenagers. When it’s consensual—for example, occurring between two students in an intimate relationship—sexting is not generally considered cyberbullying. Often, though, sexting is the catalyst for bullying behavior. Students can feel pressured by their peers or romantic partners to engage in sexting and may do so to avoid being further harassed. Unfortunately, once a student engages in sexting, they are susceptible to sextortion, which is a threat from a cyberbully that the compromising images will be shared with others or published online unless the student sends additional images or money.
8. Trickery: is a form of cyberbullying in which the perpetrator creates a false identity or persona to befriend a classmate. The cyberbully tries to make the victim believe they are a trusted friend and ally or even a supportive online peer group so that the student will feel comfortable sharing secrets and other sensitive information. Then, the bully takes the details given to them in confidence and spreads them online.
9. Trolling: is when a cyberbully posts or comments on sensitive subjects, often anonymously or using a fake name, to purposely upset peers, creating conflict and baiting them into an argument or emotional reaction (also called flaming or roasting). Sometimes the perpetrator will say things they don’t even believe just to cause drama. In other cases, they may not agree with the views of another person or group online and they will try to discredit or humiliate them for their opinions or personally attack them because of their race, culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. Trolls may also stir up a mob mentality, inciting others to join in the attack and pile on their target.

Bullying and harassing behavior in all its horrific forms, online and offline, clearly remains a major concern for all school leaders. However, the decades of research on traditional bullying have led to the development of numerous effective prevention strategies that are helping to minimize the negative outcomes for students. Cyberbullying, on the other hand, is a relatively new type of aggression with little research behind it. There are many unique and complex elements to this problem, including that the bullying occurs in the hidden digital world, on personal devices, and often outside of the school environment. For the foreseeable future, this will be one of the most challenging student safety issues for professionals in the education space to address. At AssuredPartners, we are committed to supporting school leaders with the latest risk management insights and information on this topic, and many others, in order to help them continue to lead their communitys’ efforts in protecting students.

Sources:
https://cyberbullying.org/cyberstalking
https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/increasing_threats_of_deepfake_identities_0.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7957129/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6597258/
https://www.schoolsafety.gov/bullying-and-cyberbullying
https://www.schoolsafety.gov/sites/default/files/2023-03/Bullying%20Prevention%20Strategies%20and%20Resources.pdf
https://blog.securly.com/the-10-types-of-cyberbullying/
https://www.ue.org/risk-management/health-and-well-being/combating-cyberharassment/