Rumors on MySpace falsely accuse a Howard girl of being pregnant.
A dispute over a boy erupts from the Internet into a weekend brawl among 20 Baltimore City girls.
Carroll sheriff?s deputies investigate an after-school fight fueled by online conversations and text messages.
Messages on social networking sites are sparking fights between students, leaving school districts across the Baltimore region and nation with the 21st-century challenge of educating students and parents about how to prevent cyberspace disputes from igniting into real-world violence.
“Kids say things online that they would think twice about if they had to say it face-to-face,” said Anna Bible, Carroll?s coordinator for safe and drug-free schools.
“They can say hurtful things anonymously. They don?t see the hurt feelings or hurt expressions on people?s faces.”
Teachers of health classes and other middle and high school courses statewide, including Carroll, Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties, have added cyberbullying to the curriculum. In Harford, guidance counselors make presentations on cyberbullying. Schools throughout the Baltimore region are training principals, teachers and guidance counselors about how to detect and respond to students suffering from Internet harassment. In Baltimore County,school resource officers regularly visit Facebook and MySpace to monitor brewing fights.
But Carroll Schools Superintendent Charles Ecker say parents need to get involved and is holding a summit on cyberbullying next month with the Carroll County Sheriff?s Office.
“Recently, we have seen an increase in the number of incidents of students using technological means such as texting, Internet messaging and social sites to bully and harass,” he wrote to parents this week.
“Although most of these incidents occur outside of the school building, they create friction among students during the school day and interfere with the learning process.”
