Writing Feature Articles - Lesson
Writing Feature Articles - Handout . a
Intermediate
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. a: Feature Articles Packet
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High-Tech Bullies
By Elizabeth Winchester
Mariah Lopez, 12, didn't have much to cheer about after cheerleading tryouts last month. Girls started a
mean rumor about her. The tale spread throughout her school, where other students made up more lies.
Soon Mariah started to receive disturbing text messages and calls from numbers she didn't recognize.
When the messages turned into threats, Mariah reached out to adults for help. She told her parents and
contacted her school principal.
There was a time when bullies used spoken words and ?sts to hurt others on playgrounds and around
school. Today, the bully battles have moved to a new frontier--cyberspace. Using e-mail, instant
messages, websites and cell phones, cyberbullies deliberately harm or threaten others. With their
identities hidden behind computer screens, cyberbullies can be harder to catch, and sometimes even
bolder, than their playground predecessors.
Bullying By The Numbers
As more and more kids use e-mail and text messages to communicate, experts agree that incidents of
cyberbullying, also called e-bullying, are on the rise. Two years ago, criminal-justice professors Justin
Patchin and Sameer Hinduja surveyed 1,500 kids ages 10 to 17. They report that about one-third of the
kids claimed to have been cyberbullied.
Sue Limber and Robin Kowalski, researchers and teachers at Clemson University, in South Carolina,
recently ?nished a study of 3,767 students in grades 6 through 8. Their ?ndings will be published in a
book next fall.
The researchers tracked popular methods of cyberbullying. The most common form is instant
messaging. Mean messages in chat rooms and e-mail and on websites were close behind. Limber and
Kowalski also found that girls were twice as likely as boys to be the victims of attacks.
Casey Schimeck, 12, was one victim. Last month, she found her picture and negative comments about
her and her family posted on her neighbor's MySpace page. "We were friends. I don't know what got her
mad," the seventh grader from Sterling Heights, Michigan, told TFK.
That's E-Nough!
Several states are working on laws that would require school districts to ban cyberbullying and punish
students who do it. South Carolina passed a law last year. Arkansas passed a law tw ?[? ?Y???YZ?[?[??H[ ??]?H[?X?Y]????H\?[??\? ?]?H] ? ?X?H\ ??Y?H H[????
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