END BULLYING NOW - Parental Advisory Alert

FOSTER CITY, Calif. - April 3, 2015 - PRLog -- Anyone who has a smart phone and/or a social media account is well aware of the huge number of apps that are available for use. Many of them are used for entertainment and shared with family and friends. As parents, do you know what apps your children and teens are using?

The End Bullying Now Campaign wants you to be aware of some apps that have the potential of being used to bully others that are produced by PiVi & Co and other app developers. Apps such as FatBooth, MixBooth, UglyBooth allow the user to take a picture and alter it. FatBooth makes a person look fatter. MixBooth merges two faces (the most obvious change as shown on the piviandco.com website is changing someone’s ethnicity). UglyBooth allows you to make the person look “ugly”.

PiVi & Co claim that these apps are “fun” ways to alter someone’s appearance. However, appearance is what is most used to bully others, whether it’s your body size, the color of your skin, hair color, or your overall appearance. [‘I was bullied too’: stories of bullying and coping in an online community; K. Davisa, D. P. Randalla, A. Ambrosea, M. Oranda; 2014]

Having the ability to easily change another person’s appearance and share it via email or on social media can have an unintentional consequence and can be considered cyberbullying.

Here is some information on cyberbullying:

 Over 50 percent of adolescents and teens have been bullied online, and about the same number have engaged in cyber bullying.
 Over 25 percent of adolescents and teens have been bullied repeatedly through their cell phones or the Internet.
 Well over 50 percent of young people do not tell their parents when cyber bullying occurs.
[Source: Cyber bullying: i-SAFE foundation]

We believe this can be an opportunity to educate your kids on cyber responsibility and how to treat others both online and off. Kids may not understand that the results of these apps could be demeaning or bullying.

ü      You can facilitate a discussion of how emotionally and mentally damaging bullying of any type can be.
ü      This can allow you to teach your child empathy and to look at the changed photo from the perspective of the target; how would it make you feel if you were target?
ü      Talk with your child about body image and not making judgments based on physical appearance.
ü      Discuss with your child how they can support others when they see someone is being bullied.

As a parent, there is another way you can make a difference to help end bullying:

Ø      Write to your Senators in support of the Safe Schools Improvement Act of 2015 (S.311) and ask them to request an amendment to include personal appearance to the protected classes

Founded in 2009, the End Bullying Now Campaign is a program of NAAFA, a non-profit civil rights organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for fat people. NAAFA works to eliminate discrimination based on body size and provide fat people with the tools for self-empowerment through public education, advocacy, and member support.

On the web: http://naafa-cc.org/End-Bullying-Now/