What surprised me most about my daughter’s experience with online bullying was I’m a fairly social media savvy person. I have a Twitter account. I run a blog. I understand these things. And yet I had no idea the ramifications of what was happening to her and how that influenced her on just a constant basis. So for instance when her personal information was being revealed on Instagram and –not necessarily so much on Snap Chat – but on Form Spring and Ask FM, that she was having to constantly, or she felt the need to constantly be online, constantly monitoring the accounts of the people that used to be her friends that were now bullying her so that she would be aware of whether or not her personal information was being revealed to the world. And I would go occasionally and check their accounts to see what was being said and not, but it never occurred to me that things were being said and then being removed. And that people were doing the screen shotting of the things that were said. I guess what I’m trying to convey is that once your child has been bullied on social media, it takes on a life of its own. And there is no controlling it as a parent. You are relatively helpless, which is a horrible feeling, to realize that my daughter had to go through that and that pain of that constant fear and then almost on an obsession level with having to go on to these accounts to see if things were being said about her. It’s really devastating. My advice for parents with children entering into the social media age, which I think is the junior high school, middle school, and then into the middle school, be aware of whatever form of social media it is that your child is using. Like right now Instagram is very popular. Facebook isn’t so popular with our kids. You have to be on top of whatever the latest and the greatest is. First it was Form Spring. That turned into Ask FM. I’m sure that will turn into something else. But we have to be constantly vigilant about whatever that latest and greatest form of social media is that our children are using to become aware of those forms that are really dangerous. My daughter, I’m sure, she can really tell us, created a Form Spring or Ask FM account without my permission. I tried to monitor that and prevent her from having those accounts. But in order for her to even look to see what other people were saying about her probably felt compelled to create those accounts. I felt very strongly about Snap Chat. I thought that was just the absolute most dangerous form of social media. Because children were engaging in risqué behavior with one another, photos that they thought would be deleted that I was aware were going off to multiple servers all over the world. Never even throw away. It’s a fallacy to even begin to believe that. So my advice again would be to be very familiar with the different forms of social media that there are. Monitor your child’s computer time, their phone time, and really try to surround them with the best people that you possibly can to teach them that anything they share, even with their friends in real life, can end up on social media to their extreme disadvantage.