By Paul Grossinger
The no cyberbullying provision is sailing through the Michigan State Senate and is likely to be added to the state’s landmark new anti-bullying bill.
The new no cyberbullying provision, Senate Bill 74, would require schools to enact specific anti-cyberbullying rules as part of the new changes to “Matt’s Safe School Law,” which requires schools to adopt formal rules against bullying.
The no cyberbullying provision is the work of Democratic State Senator Glenn Anderson, who voted against the 2011 bill specifically because it did not include cyberbullying.
“I think I was the only member of the Senate that did not support passage of the original bill because I felt cyberbullying and reporting were two elements that needed to be addressed and they weren’t,” Anderson, said, according to mlive.com.
Michigan’s move to attack cyberbullying with the no cyberbullying provision is part of a wide move toward no cyberbullying provisions across the country. This summer, tragic suicides by teenagers Gabrielle Molina in New York, Rebecca Ann Sedwick in Florida, Hannah Smith in the UK, and Rehtaeh Parsons has drawn attention to the rising cyberbullying problem across the country.
But state laws are only the beginning of the solution. For parents facing cyberbullying problems, they need technology to enforce no cyberbullying provisions on their own children and those of others.
MMGuardian Parental Control can be part of that solution. MMGuardian lets parents monitor text messages for bullying words or phrases and enables parents to monitor and block chat applications that are often used for cyberbullying, such as Snapchat, Skype, and Facebook Messenger.