Overview

Digital spaces create unique challenges for online communication, where misunderstandings can quickly escalate, audiences can grow rapidly, and harm can linger long after conflicts begin. From misinterpreted jokes and hurtful comments to cyberbullying, harassment, and targeted online attacks, students face a wide range of potentially harmful behavior online. Managing these types of online challenges often requires strong social and emotional skills and nuanced thinking. 

Our Cyberbullying & Online Harms lessons teach students how to recognize, respond to, and recover from online conflict and digital harm. These lessons go beyond simple cyberbullying prevention by addressing the full cycle of online harm, helping students identify early warning signs, respond thoughtfully, and rebuild relationships and restore community when possible. Students learn practical tools for handling online drama, managing digital conflict, and fostering healthier online communities. Through age-appropriate, interactive activities, students learn to navigate difficult situations with empathy, courage, and responsibility.

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Our Instructional Approach

Recognize, Respond, and Repair

Our curriculum approaches cyberbullying and online harms through three interconnected areas:

• Recognize: Students develop the awareness to identify different types of online harm, from mild misunderstandings to serious cyberbullying. These lessons help students understand how online spaces can amplify and escalate conflicts, how others can interpret messages differently than we might expect, and how to distinguish between playful teasing and harmful behavior. Students learn to recognize not only obvious attacks, but also subtler forms of harm that may be disguised as jokes or unintentionally hurtful comments.
• Respond: Students learn specific strategies for taking action when they encounter online harm, whether as targets or witnesses. These lessons teach structured approaches through acronyms like "SAFE" and "STAND" that guide students through appropriate responses to different situations. Students practice being upstanders who support targets of cyberbullying, making decisions about when to involve trusted adults, and taking steps to de-escalate conflicts before they worsen.
• Repair: Students explore how to rebuild relationships and restore community after online harm has occurred. These lessons focus on the "MEND" framework for healing friendships, distinguishing between meaningful apologies and empty excuses, and taking accountability for one's actions. Students develop the emotional intelligence and communication skills needed to address harm, rebuild trust, and strengthen their digital communities after conflicts.

Building Resilient Digital Communities

Our approach recognizes that addressing cyberbullying requires more than just prevention strategies. It requires building resilient communities where students can navigate conflicts productively and heal relationships when harm occurs. We understand that children will make mistakes online, just as they do offline, and need guidance not only in avoiding those mistakes but in addressing them constructively when they happen.

Our lessons use realistic scenarios that reflect students' actual experiences, acknowledging the complex social dynamics that can lead to online harm (without oversimplifying or catastrophizing). This approach helps students develop a more nuanced understanding of different types of harmful online behavior. They'll learn strategies for responding appropriately, with an emphasis on the importance of empathy, perspective-taking, and restoration in maintaining healthy communities, both online and offline.

Grade-by-Grade Progression

Each grade level addresses all three dimensions of cyberbullying and online harms through developmentally appropriate lessons:

• Grades K-2: Young learners begin exploring digital kindness by engaging with our Digital Citizens characters, and particularly our "Legs" character, who helps them understand how to be an upstander when seeing unkind behavior online. Students learn to recognize when words might hurt feelings, simple strategies for getting help when they witness mean behavior, and basic concepts about making things right after mistakes.
• Grades 3-5: Older elementary students explore more complex concepts like how online messages can be interpreted differently by different people, how meanness can escalate in digital spaces, and when humor crosses the line into hurtful behavior. They learn specific frameworks using acronyms like "SAFE" for responding to mean words, "STAND" for being an upstander, and "MEND" for repairing friendships after harm occurs. Students practice distinguishing between different types of online harm and applying appropriate strategies based on the situation.
• Grades 6-8: Middle school students tackle more sophisticated topics like the social dynamics that enable cyberbullying, the role of bystanders in either amplifying or reducing harm, and the complexities of accountability and forgiveness in digital spaces. They analyze patterns of online behavior that can lead to harm, develop advanced strategies for intervening in different scenarios, and explore the challenges and importance of rebuilding trust after serious breaches. Students also examine how platform design and community norms can either foster or prevent cyberbullying.

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