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Educating The Community On Cyber Bullying

http://youtu.be/pB2Kzw74YYo

 

Cyber Bullying continues to be a growing issue among young people and now educators hope raising awareness of the subject can help control the problem.
 
Keahi Kimo Souza is a community activist based in Albuquerque.  He travels around the state talking about the issue he's most passionate about and that's cyber bullying.
 
"Bulllying has been going on for years and years, decades as a matter of fact, but with social media and social technology especially the phones and the mobility of the phones with regards to not only pictures, but also videos.  It can be used positively but also very negatively in a variety of different situations," he said.
 
Souza, a behavioral health specialist who's worked in the area of adult and youth gangs for the past ten years says bullying is common among gang members.
 
"We know there's gang bullies out there.  We know there's school bullies on campus," he said.
 
Souza says bullying is frequent in transition points, from elementary school to middle school and from middle school to high school.  He says bullying happens where most adults are not around and works with adolescents on trying to assess their own situations.
 
"Safety is first because when we do interventions, we actually want the kids to be able to stand up and be able to assert themselves, however in some situations they need to assess because if the bully, if there is a safety issue obviously we tell them to walk away and report it to administrators.  In other situations for example, they are being picked on that safety issue is really not a concern we try to teach them assertiveness, to stand up and share that maybe that bothered me, I don't like you doing those things, its really an assertive issue at this point," he said.
 
With more and more young people having access to cell phones, Souza says the problem will continue to grow as videos from smart phones can now be connected to television sets or onto internet sites and can be broadcast world wide.
 
"The mobility and just the technology of the video taping and the clarity and all those types of things and the communication with computers and other smart phones and those types of things it can be used in a variety of different ways and it can actually be, its not only convenient it can also be used very, very negatively," he said.
 

Carlos Correa previously served as KRWG's News Director. He covered stories throughout the area, and previously anchored the weekly program Fronteras-A Changing America, which airs Thursday at 7:30pm, Saturday at 5:30pm, and Sunday at 11:30am on KRWG-TV.