Melania fights cyberbullies, like her hubby
Melania Trump is moving forward with her anti-cyberbullying platform, despite her husband's habit of berating and belittling opponents and critics online.
The First Lady will attend a summit on the subject Monday, delivering “brief remarks addressing the positive and negative effects of social media on youth — a key issue of her Be Best campaign,” her office said last week.
However hypocritical the initiative may appear, experts are hopeful that the First Lady is sincere in her interest.
“We were cautiously optimistic at first, and she's been kind of slow to get involved in things,” Justin Patchin, a criminal justice professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and co-director of the CyberBullying Research Center, told the Daily News. “But she has a huge platform, and if she can articulate the harm of some of these behaviors, it will make a difference.”
Patchin's group defines cyberbullying as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices.”
The CyberBullying Research Center, which serves as an online information source, has been studying the phenomenon for years and has found that roughly 34% of students surveyed report experiencing cyberbullying.
An additional 15% of students admitted to bullying others online. While face-toface bullying is still more common, teens are spending more and more time online.
As of 2015, 92% of teens reported going online daily and 24% reported going online “constantly,” according to the Journal of Adolescent Health.
The First Lady has faced criticism from the start for her plans to combat cyberbullying.
Ahead of the 2016 election, she promised in a rare campaign speech to “find a better way to talk to each other, to disagree with each other, to respect each other.”
But little became of her vow until this year, when she launched the Be Best initiative to promote children's emotional and social well-being.
As part of the rollout in May, her office shared a “new” digital booklet titled, “Talking With Kids About Being Online.” It was billed as a collaboration between the First Lady and the Federal Trade Commission. The pamphlet was ripped by critics for being practically identical to an FTC booklet produced in 2014 on the same subject.
And all the while, the President kept on tweeting, ripping his enemies and creating sophomoric and controversial nicknames for political opponents.
During the past week, Trump took to Twitter an average of 13 times a day as he mocked Gov. Cuomo, called Sen. Richard Blumenthal (DConn.) a “loser” and “total fake,” and blasted former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman as a “crazed, crying lowlife” and a “dog.”