Watch out, cyber-bullies

[Jazzy]

For 13-year-old Samantha Milan, the worst part about being bullied was the fact that it happened in front of a huge audience. "This kid started threatening me, and then it went online to Instagram," she said. "The caption said something like, 'Look who's hungry.' It made me feel like I just wanted to die."

A growing number of teenagers like Samantha say they've been bullied online. Almost 15 percent of students in grades 9 to 12 have experienced cyber-bullying, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 2013 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System. And those kids are more than twice as likely to consider suicide, according to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"It feels horrible because everyone can see it," Samantha said. "And everything that goes online, never goes away. Even if you destroy the computer, it's still there."

Cyber-bullying can involve nasty text messages or offensive pictures posted on social media, and there's a whole range of technology available to fight it.

The social network We Heart It is designed to prevent an experience like Samantha's. It allows users to share photos but no one can post comments on them. It's very popular with teens, who make up most of its 25 million users.

Identity protection program Metlife Defender offers a service that monitors a child's online accounts for abusive content, then sends alerts to their parents.

And just last week, the U.S. Department of Education unveiled a new app called KnowBullying to help parents spot warning signs and talk to their kids about the problem.

Another recently-released cellphone app called StopIt takes a different approach. It enables children to take a screenshot of a harassing post, picture or text message, and anonymously send it to a trusted adult. This is the app's most popular feature among teenagers, who often want to help, but are worried about retaliation.

The StopIt app helped put an end to offensive tweets about a 14-year-old boy from Kenilworth, New Jersey, who has Asperger's syndrome. "It was a child who finally said 'Enough is enough,' and I'm so grateful to whoever that child was," said the boy's mother, Tina Lynaugh. "I'm glad that the children feel comfortable that they can actually say StopIt, and not feel intimidated themselves or feel that they'll be attacked next because they came forward."

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