5 Apps That Could Help to Stop Cyberbullying

December 10, 2010 | 4:35 PM | By

Flickr: The Daring Librarian

By Sara Bernard

Okay, no app is really going to “stop” cyberbullying, but a few are trying.

Perhaps the most lauded recently is the “Find Help” application on Facebook.

Often blamed as an easy venue for cyberbullies to target victims, Facebook has partnered with the monitoring site SafetyWeb to create an app that allows users not only to immediately report inappropriate behavior to Facebook officials, but also to connect to various support organizations. These include suicide hotlines and child abuse prevention centers, such as Partners Against Hate, which offers anti-hate crime education and strategies.

Other apps that claim to educate kids and parents about — and help prevent — cyberbullying:

Professor Garfield Cyberbullying: Available for iPad at the iTunes app store, this is essentially a Garfield comic strip that helps kids identify bullying behavior and provide strategies for dealing with bullies (such as how important it is to seek the support of a trusted adult).

Web Safety, Inc.’s “Cell Safety”: An application for smart phones designed to help parents monitor their child’s cell phone activity. Parents receive alerts when their children are sent certain problematic keywords (which, Web Safety says, is the world’s largest database of its kind, with 4,000 terms that “indicate a child is in harm’s way.”) Cell Safety also features a slew of other child-monitoring tools, from GPS tracking to one that prevents texting while driving.

GoGoStat Parental Guidance: The GoGoStat iPhone app was developed by Schakra, one of the sponsors of the International Bullying Prevention Association Conference, and alerts parents when kids post or receive inappropriate messages, displays the age and location of anyone their child intends to friend on Facebook, and has a panic button feature that automatically sends a report to the police in case of emergency.

Destructive Issues: This iPhone or iPod app for parents lists, describes, and provides solutions for the issues teens face. Developed by father-and-son team William and Eric Nidiffer, along with the Southern Nevada Community Gang Task Force, the app targets problems like cyberbullying, gangs, depression, and substance abuse, and creates pro-and-con scenarios that help explain the reasons teenagers make the choices they do. Another, soon-to-be-released app the Nidiffers and the task force are designing, called S.P.I.R.I.T. (short for Suppression, Prevention, Intervention, Referral Intelligence Tool), will create a series of gang-prevention, solution-oriented apps for teens themselves.

All this monitoring may seem a bit too “Big Brother.” But to some parents, it’s essential. With so much attention to cyberbullying-related youth suicides, the tech industry is responding.

FILED UNDER: Culture, apps, cyberbullying, Facebook, Social Media

Related posts:

  1. How Educators Can Help Stop Bullying
  2. How to stop online bullying
  3. Take Control and Stop Cyber-Bullying
  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_3AHX53KZM7I224HDM4WZLQYLQE Randy Buchler

    At least Facebook is making an effort to try and curb some cyberbullying. They need to do more and government needs to pass a law where internet companies that don’t do anything to help protect children or keep people from being libel to be allowed to be sued in some instances. People have made a mockery of what the first amendment is and I can assure you it was never intended to attack others. No one has a right to destroy another person. I applaud this effort. Now if only a far worse cyberbullying company, Topix, would police their forums and start requring some type of registration like Disqus maybe more and more children wouldn’t be using that site for a “slam book”

  • http://twitter.com/dd_dienutza Diana Abu-Zuaiter

    The main way bullying is happening is online identity theft. To actually know for sure who is making an account is impossible online. I think trolls just want attention and just want to be heard, if we keep ignoring them they will get bored. I am not saying that it is not an actual problem but most of the times that is the case. And in the cases in which cyberbullying can affect children I think education and parent monitoring should get involved. Check out this post and share your views: http://ethicalblabbing.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/social-media-becoming-unsocial-trolling/