Recent surveys show that over 40 percent of students have been bullied while online and over 20 percent  have sent or received a “sext.”
According to Dr. Rolla Bradley, a licensed counselor near San Antonio, Texas, the origin for both is technology, more specifically, Facebook.
Both terms were penned 5-7 years ago, right when Facebook started.
“When I was a kid, you had to find who you wanted to bully and find a time when you wouldn’t get caught,” Bradley said. “Now it takes 30 seconds.”
While cell phones are great for emergencies and staying in contact with family, Bradley dislikes how instant they are.
“You don’t have to stop and think,” Bradley said.
A main cause of cyberbullying is when people tell those outside of the “circle of context,” or people who are not directly involved with the event.
“The circle of context is not your best friend who wasn’t there that you want to tell,” Bradley said about how cyberbullying moves from one person to more taking part in the bullying.
The problem extends beyond bullying, Bradley said. No matter how long ago a person cyberbullies or sends a sext, it never completely leaves.
“Two seventh graders sent pictures to boys that ended up online,” Bradley said. “When those girls applied to college, their names were Googled and those pictures were found. They didn’t get accepted.”
Due to the increase of phones in middle schools, sexting has been rising rapidly.
“Middle school is the peak of sexual interest,” Bradley said. “They don’t understand what they’re doing.”
Bradley believes one way to stop both cyberbullying and sexting is disciplining and educating children.
“Your children are your children,” Bradley said. “They have no privacy. I could pick up my childrens’ phones at any time and if a computer screen changed when I walked in, I assumed the worst.”
While Bradley says that adolescents don’t always know what they’re doing, he believes at the same time, they somewhat understand right from wrong.
“A lot of it is educating,” Bradley said. “If the frontal lobe is educated, they know if it’s wrong.”
The difference between cyberbullying and regular bullying is that generally, bullying doesn’t result in murder.
“A bully wants his target scared, not dead,” Bradley said. “With cyberbullying, sometimes you don’t even know who is bullying you.”
Bradley thinks that the future of technology “manners” lies with todays’ youth.
“Say ‘that’s not okay,”’ Bradley said. “Curiosity may be killing us, we may want to see it, but as we begin to make better decisions, we begin to change society.”