President's Bullying Summit

A lot of talk has come out of the President's Bullying Summit held last week and of his new website stopbullying.gov. I found this video of a panel held during the summit to be pretty interesting (you can skip the first 9:20 seconds which is mostly fluff and introductions). The website mentioned has a lot of good information (almost too much) which can be found HERE.

As bullying becomes more and more a priority for everyone, I think its important for all of us to become better versed on research and to take a look at the issue from a broader perspective. Bullying is not a new problem but its now one we care about much more as a society. We are also facing new challenges in terms of technology (namely cellular communications and social media) and in the law (zero tolerance policies for violence in schools) which add additional and somewhat more complex dimensions to the issue. I hear so many people say "fight the bully, that will stop 'em" but what is different now is that school fights are criminal and that the bully victim would be arrested. Its also difficult to lecture to young people about their online usage given the perspective that this is not something we were forced to face with and can easily say "well I wouldn't respond that way..." or "why do you even need a facebook in the first place?".

Obviously there is no silver bullet or handful of magic beans that will make "being mean" go away, especially go away overnight. That is why I appreciate one of the panelist's comments on looking at the broader picture and focusing on the relationships and climate (16:20 mark). He notes that in emphasizing those two things you model the behavior you'd like to see, open up lines of communication between youth and adults, and help build resiliency among young people so that if  bullying does happen they are more more adapt at working within the system or handling it themselves.