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On what Facebook could be doing to help stem cyberbullying

"Facebook has a lot of influence over kids who are mean. They know from their own data that when they tell kids that they've posted something inappropriate [and] they ask them to take it down, those kids don't re-offend. Facebook's line on this to me was that they have a very low recidivism rate, and so to me, that suggests that Facebook can really use its influence to the good with kids in a way it has been reluctant to do so far, because it doesn't want to be seen as uncool."

On one bullying situation that Bazelon feels was handled intelligently by school counselors and administrators

"[The guidance counselor] decided one of those relationships [among the three girls] was a pretty equal relationship, and she could sit two of the kids down together, and they had enough residual trust and liking for each other that they might be able to talk it out with her help. And she did that, and in fact the girls told me that they had found that helpful. But then when the girl who was really the main bully in this scenario ... this guidance counselor decided, you know, 'This isn't going to work to sit these kids down together because it may be that the bully will say what she thinks the adult wants to hear in the room, and then there will be all kinds of consequences once the kids leave.'

"And so with that girl she sent that girl to the principal — and in this school it was unusual for kids to get sent to the principal for discipline, he was kind of reserved for the harder cases — and I asked that girl what this meeting was like. She said, 'You know, he appealed to me for help. He said, 'Look, we have a problem and you're the one who can stop it.' And she liked the idea that he was turning to her and that she had had this moment with him, and so she cut it out. She said that she felt like she wanted to help him in the way he had asked."

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