Technology to Prevent School Bullying from Lightspeed

November 18, 2022

Prevent School Bullying with Lightspeed Alert

Bullying and cyberbullying continue to be prevalent in K-12 schools. In fact, 90% of students in Grades 4-8 report that they have been bullied or harassed and 19.5% of students in Grades 9-12 report that they have been bullied at school.

Access to technology has only increased instances of bullying online. In a survey conducted by Lightspeed Systems®, over 67% of IT professionals said cyberbullying had increased at their school due to technology.

Inappropriate use of technology leads to cyberbullying–but using technology to help prevent school bullying can be the key to the success of a school’s bullying prevention program.

So how can you leverage K-12-specific software to prevent school bullying and cyberbullying in your district?

Using technology to address instances of bullying and cyberbullying in K-12

Technology products are often your best chance at identifying instances of cyberbullying. The students of today are constantly connected to their devices—at home and at school. For many students, their entire day is spent online. Teens spend on average, 7 hours and 22 minutes on their personal devices—in addition to their schoolwork. For schoolwork, 56% of students spend over two hours actively engaged in digital learning per day. Students start the day scrolling on a personal device, use a school-issued device in class, and then use devices at home for homework and socialization. As a result, more of their peer interactions are taking place online, including bullying.

Lightspeed Alert™ has bullying-specific artificial intelligence features that scan for hate speech and key terms related to bullying like racial slurs, sexual slurs, or wishes of violence or suicide on another student. These alerts are flagged and sent to your designated staff in real time so they can address instances and prevent school bullying before a situation escalates to violence or self-harm. Reports from Lightspeed Alert’s software provides timelines and screenshots to help district administrators get the full picture of bullying and cyberbullying incidents for appropriate documentation and intervention.

To better support your safety staff, alert notifications are also sent to the Lightspeed Systems human review team, known as safety specialists. With backgrounds in education, law enforcement, and investigation, Lightspeed Safety Specialists have further training in threat assessment and suicide prevention. The specialists review alerts 24/7/365 so that no alert goes unnoticed no matter the day or time. Lightspeed Alert provides a critical layer of protection to help stop bullying and cyberbullying before it becomes a bigger problem.

How a web filter can help prevent bullying

In addition to catching instances to prevent bullying, technology solutions can support your bullying prevention efforts. It is essential that your district’s technology products can do the following:

Filter BYOD as easily as school-issued devices to protect students of all ages from harmful online content known to facilitate bullying and harassment.
Prevent harmful behavior before it starts by allowing safe social media use with “read-only mode” and customizable social media controls to keep valuable content accessible to students, without the risks.
Ensure YouTube is a safe, distraction-free learning resource by blocking potentially harmful videos, comments, and sidebars.

Lightspeed Filter™—our patented, CIPA-compliant web filtering technology—addresses all of these concerns to ensure that your IT staff and district leaders have easy-to-use controls that grant or deny access where it makes sense for your district and students’ unique needs.

Lightspeed Filter lets school districts customize social media controls so they can set appropriate policies to common cyberbullying platforms—like Instagram and Twitter—while on school devices. With Lightspeed Filter, schools can allow, block, or set social media sites to “read-only mode” so social platforms are used appropriately.

Lightspeed Filter blocks other harmful content or sites related to bullying, including YouTube content. Easy SmartPlay™ controls keep students from reading or sending potentially malicious comments on YouTube so they can stay focused on educational videos.

With students living in a digital world and technology so ingrained in the learning process, implementing technology products that are designed specifically to address instances of bullying in K-12 schools is critical to maintaining a safe and healthy environment for students. Software like Lightspeed Alert can help K-12 schools address bullying and cyberbullying when it happens, and Lightspeed Filter can help prevent it.

Schedule a demo or request a quote to see how Lightspeed Systems can help your district address and prevent bullying in all its forms with technology.