The Need to Protect.

It's still building, your fear - of someone out there being mean to your child - but not on a playground or in a school lunch cafeteria, but ONLINE!! eeeeeek! sorry. I dont mean to kid, BUT - we can't always protect them from every bully can we?

Well here's a little research to make you feel a little more knowledgeable

(think it with me.. KNOWLEDGE is POWER)

According to researchers that have affiliations with the

National Institute of Child and Human Development, the idea on bullying in general is this :

"Although violence among US youth is a current major concern, bullying is infrequently addressed and no national data on the prevalence of bullying are available."

Their analysis of nearly 16 thousand secondary school children from public & private schools throughout the U.S. during the spring of 1998.

So, what they're saying is, we're concerned about it, it happens, we ignore it and we dont track it. right? - WRONG

[here's the link for the whole study they conducted -

make what you will of it.. but BE INFORMED.

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/285/16/2094.short]

However if you look at more recent studies that show risk factors involving Cyber-bullying - it becomes apparent that in nearly 14 years, things have changed - people are beginning to worry and wonder and realize the risks are there.

Here's a GREAT explanation of how things have escaladed - (information from an article from the Children and Youth Services Review)

"Given the dramatic growth of children and adolescents‘ use of online technologies for social connections and the relative lack of knowledge about cyber bullying, a grounded theory approach was deemed most appropriate to allow participants‘ perspectives to emerge and to explore the complexity of this phenomenon"

ahh- finally it's being acknowledged.. see I told you -- there IS truth in knowledge.