Witnessing Online Meanness and Cruelty: What Can You Do?

Have students access the student chapter Witnessing Online Meanness and Cruelty: What Can You Do?, or share it on a digital projector or digital whiteboard.

Have students watch the video and then answer the multiple choice question: What should you do to help first?

When students have answered the question, point out that all of the options could be good choices, and explain that there are two important reasons why you should always start by talking privately with the target of mean and cruel behaviour before doing anything else:

• First, because they may feel like everybody else is on the side of the person being mean or cruel. In some cases, telling them you don’t support what’s happening can be the most important thing you can do.
• Second, because while things like speaking out against what’s happening or trying to mediate between people can be helpful, there may be reasons why the target doesn’t want you to do those things, and you should respect that.

Now have students complete the “Being an Active Witness to Cyberbullying” interactive exercise by sorting the different possible ways of responding according to whether they’re likely to help and almost certainly won’t make things worse, whether they might help but might also make things worse, and whether they are likely to just make things worse.