Social media leading to ‘social assassination’ among kids

Founder and President of Safer Schools Together, Campbell travels the country and Canada training educators about bullying prevention.  We caught up with her during an all day training session with Desert Sands Unified School District.

“The whole image of self takes a pretty significant hit, if you will, when in fact they’ve got multiple people commenting on their appearances,” said Campbell. The first step, Campbell says, is knowing what sites and apps your kids are on beyond Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

So what can you as a parent do to stop it? Here is what one Valley school district (student) is doing. “I was on Instagram,” said 6th grader Nathaniel Kirby. “He was just making fun of people and bad stuff, spreading rumors about people just making them feel bad about themselves.”

That’s why Campbell is training teachers to look for changes in student behavior and Desert Sands Unified School District is monitoring social networking sites. “It’s our job to investigate it even though it’s happening outside of school.  It’s affecting the well-being of the student which affects their ability to learn,” said DSUSD director of security and safety Jeff Kaye.

Through anti-bullying programs the district hopes  changing the culture at school will stop bullying before it starts.

“It would be just as nice to see more kids step up and remind kids that it’s a good time to be respectful of each other,” said Campbell.

That is exactly what Nathaniel did.

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http://www.kesq.com/news/social-media-leading-to-social-assassination-among-kids/29933046