USA Today – Steven Petrow
“Recently, I had lunch with a friend whose daughter is just starting ninth grade. We talked a lot about the “mean girls” who had taunted and bullied “Samantha” — both online and offline — last year and how my friend was trying to help her going into the new school year. While I’ve long been aware of bullying as an insidious problem, Samantha’s situation brought it home for me. I also came across some new statistics: More than 3.2 million students identify as victims of bullying each year, and bullying is linked to truancy, anxiety, substance abuse and suicide, reports the Tyler Clementi Foundation, founded in the memory of the Rutgers student who took his own life after a cyber-bullying episode.”(more)