Chris Syme is providing a five-part series on social media education for student-athletes ranging from middle school through college. She is the former CoSIDA New Media/Technology Committee Chair. You can follow her on
Twitter or via
her website or contact her via email at
chris@cksyme.com.
Syme believes schools need to incorporate cyber harassment education into their social media training. This is a brief look at how to incorporate cyber harassment awareness into your social media training.
This is the final piece in the series; see the first four articles of this five-part series below:
Part 1:
The Essentials Of Social Media Training For Students
Part 2:
What Students Need To Know About Social Media Privacy
Part 3:
What Students Need To Know About Social Media Best Practices
Part 4:
What Students Need to Know About Personal Branding
One in five college students report they have been bullied, stalked, or harassed online , with some studies estimating as high as 34 percent (Baldasare, Bauman, Goldman & Robie, 2012). A recent study reported that over 70 percent of their college student respondents indicated a desire for prevention education targeted at online safety. Yet only 56 percent of college athletic departments were training student-athletes in the responsible use of social media in early 2013.
Cyber harassment continues to grow among college age students. And according to a recent article in
Athletic Management Magazine (April/May 2014), it may be virtually ignored in the world of college athletics. Even though harassment behavior can take place in the locker room, on the field, and out of the view of coaches’ eyes, athletic departments are starting to embrace the idea that educating students on how to deal with online harassment is just as troubling as face-to-face confrontation.
In this final installment in the series on essential elements to put in your social media training for students, we’ll tackle this subject of cyber harassment in its various forms and how to help student-athletes to lower their risk of being a victim, and what to do if they find themselves a victim.
Identify/Recognize
First, it’s important to help students understand what cyber harassment is and what it is not. In athletics, we encourage a certain amount of what
Randy Nathan calls “horseplay” and trash talking in the name of team building. It’s important for coaches and team leaders to understand the fine line between this and bullying and educate players accordingly.
Definitions of cyber harassment behavior vary within research. But there are some basic elements usually present in all bullying: it is aggressive, it is usually repeated, and it often represents an imbalance of power.
When it comes to social media, training should include how to deal with four basic manifestations: online bullying, unwanted inappropriate contact (such as unsolicited sexting or pictures), account impersonation, and fan harassment. Each of these should be defined and examples shown. Students need to know that any of these manifestations are inappropriate and should be armed with the knowledge of how to handle each.
Risk Factors
As with regular bullying, one of the first things we look at is risk. What behaviors are the students engaging in that elevate their exposure to harassment? Some they can control and some they cannot. Help them identify each and give them the tools to lower the risk of the behaviors they can control. There are a wide spectrum of risk factors including: lack of privacy and security of personal social media accounts (Pew Research Center, 2012; Browning & Sanderson, 2012; Lyndon, Bonds-Raacke, & Cratty, 2011) exposure to motivated offenders (Reyns, Henson, & Fisher, 2011; Browning & Sanderson, 2012) lack of supervision and high number of social media networks used (Reyns, Henson, & Fisher, 2011), time spent online (Lindsay, 2012) and engagement in online trash talking behaviors with teammates, coaches, opponents, and fans (Rainey & Granito, 2010). Work with students to help them navigate what they can control.
Modeling
It’s important for athletic departments to also train coaches, trainers, and staff on the subject of cyber harassment. Make sure there is a well-known procedure in place for students to be able to report incidents and an assurance that, if they need it, the department will help them mediate the problem. Even though many initial incidents go unnoticed by students because they seem innocuous, some students may not have the coping mechanisms to deal with the constant onslaught of online harassment. Make sure coaches model the appropriate behavior that discourages repetitive, harmful harassment of team members. Consider crafting a bullying/cyber harassment section for the student-athlete handbook.
Reporting Procedures
Documented effects on well-being of cyber harassment victims include higher than normal rates of depression, substance abuse, and suicidal thoughts (Gamez-Guadix, Orue, Smith & Calvette, 2012) in addition to fear, anxiety, low motivation, and academic poor performance (Walker, Sockman, & Koehn, 2011). Student-athletes also face unique consequences due to their public personas and scrutiny from fans, students, and coaches (Browning & Sanderson, 2012). The cost of cyber harassment on student-athletes can be devastating.
Students need to know procedures are in place to protect them, even if they never need them. I recently worked with a school where two student-athletes (a male and female) were victims of account impersonation on Twitter. Someone (they thought an acquaintance) put together Twitter accounts for each one and began posting photos and having conversations with their friends. The students, who were not on Twitter, became the victims of a long campaign of inappropriate interactions, carried out in the public eye. The school eventually got the accounts taken down and in the process involved campus police.