Hey, Melania Trump, here’s how you could actually help stop cyberbullying
Melania Trump set off a nationwide eye roll when she announced she would fight cyberbullying as first lady.
Taking a hammer to the tweeter in chief’s smartphone would certainly send a message.
.. In this first major push, Trump isn’t expected to unveil proposals but, rather, to ask the companies how they’re addressing problems such as trolls and promoting kindness, according to people invited to the meeting.
.. I’m not hopeful that anybody — even the first lady — can control the president’s name-calling Twitter persona. But her experience as a mother, her life in the spotlight as a model and even the nastiness emanating from her own White House certainly give Trump a unique vantage point on bullying.
Here are five ideas the first lady could get behind.
.. Focus on bystanders. America might be able to learn from Finland. There, a national anti-bullying education program called KiVa has been shown to greatly benefit the students who experienced the most bullying. Its secret: a focus on increasing the empathy of bystanders, who can keep bullies from gaining status and power.
KiVa asks students to use role-playing exercises and computer simulations to think about how they would intervene to reduce bullying. Anti-bullying programs usually seek to reduce the overall rates of bullying, but KiVa’s focus on bystanders showed a significant mental health boost — reducing depression and improving self-esteem — for the victims of bullying.