WiredKids Summits

A successful anti-cyberbullying campaign has to involve kids, preteens and teens, parents, schools, government and law enforcement. Each stakeholder group has a special role in the solution and a special perspective.

Understanding this, cyberlawyer and Internet safety expert Parry Aftab has designed a multi-pronged educational and awareness campaign against cyberbullying.

The first US Cyberbullying WiredKids Summit was hosted by Westchester County Executive, Andrew Spano. On February 8, 2005 Spano brought in Parry and the WiredKids experts to help bring awareness to the problem of cyberbullying and harassment and start creating solutions tailored to the Westchester County community. While the summit was designed for no more than 400 participants, more than 600 showed up. They included local schools, teachers and students (middle and high school students), law enforcement, parents, community leaders, politicians, prosecutors, and medical and mental health professionals. It was an overwhelming success and the first step in creating a safer Internet experience for Westchester’s families. The Westchester summit was featured in Time for Kids, USA Today and many publications and television programs around the United States and Canada.

In conjunction with the summit, Westchester County produced a cyberbullying shot video, which recently won the coveted Telly Award for its innovation and valuable contribution. The video can be viewed at Westchestergov.com/cybernet and will be made available to all Westchester County residents along with Wired Safety’s Internet safety video, “the 4Ps – Privacy, Predators, Pornography and Pop-ups, what families need to know.”

The WiredKids Cyberbullying Summit series will be available for delivery in local communities around the United States and in certain countries around the world. It is staffed by WiredKids’ experts and local community leaders. For more information about hosting your own WiredKids Cyberbullying Summit, please use our General Contact Form.

As we provide our children with powerful technology tools, we need to teach them not only safe surfing, but responsible technology use. There are serious problems we need to protect our children from online. It’s a shame that we also need to protect them from each other.