About Us
The National Youth Internet Safety and Cyberbullying Task Force, Inc. (ISTF) is a nationally recognized task force that works to promote safe online practices for teens, kids, and families. It also serves as a catalyst for the prevention of teen suicide, teen dating abuse, human trafficking, and bullying through research, education, support, helplines, and resources. It also works to aid teen victims of sexual abuse and/or family abuse. The task force covers a wide range of teen related issues, but focuses the majority of its time on teen suicide, bullying, internet safety, dating abuse, and cyberbullying.
The task force works in communities across the United States and has a large social media presence in the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom. We started opening branch offices in numerous communities so that we can impact teenagers directly. By the end of summer 2018, we will have around four offices in New York State, two in Pennsylvania, one in Vermont, and two in Massachusetts. By the end of 2018, we expect to open several offices across the mid-west and south-east.
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The task force is recognized as a national task force which is formed typically as a special operation to work to help a certain task or cause. It's also recognized as a human service organization, as well as a non-profit organization under the Internal Revenue Service's 501(c)3 tax exemption code. As a non-profit organization, we rely 100% on donations to keep the task force running. Some donations come from the community, some come from businesses, and some come from grants and awards. We take pride in saying that over 90 cents of every dollar goes to help further our mission. As one of the nation's leading anti-bullying organizations, we also heavily rely on volunteers. The task force is almost 100% volunteer, so most of our work is done by volunteers across the country. We encourage you to apply to become a volunteer. Even if you have a packed schedule as it is, we could still use the help and support!
The task force works to help teens, parents, families, and schools on a daily basis and we couldn't succeed without the support of people just like you.
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If you're able to donate, we would really appreciate it! Donations keep us running and we appreciate all the donations we receive, whether it's $1 or $1,000, all of it helps!
The Statistics
87%
OF YOUTH HAVE WITNESSED CYBERBULLYING
72%
OF TEENS ADMIT THEY HAVE BEEN CYBERBULLIED AT LEAST ONCE BECAUSE OF THEIR LOOKS
39%
OF TEENS DO NOT ENABLE PRIVACY SETTINGS ON THEIR PHONE
One in three teens feel they are more accepted online rather than in real life.
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Over 20% of cyberbullying victims often face hurtful rumors.
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Over 20% of harassed children feel that their sexuality was the cause for the bullying.
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Over 150,000 youth skip school each day due to b
Keeping our youth safe online.
More than 18,500 endangered runaways were reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2016. Of these, one in six were likely victims of child sex trafficking. In 2016, there was 465, 676 NCIC entries for missing children according to the FBI. In 2016, NCMEC's CyberTipline received more than 8.2 million reports. The majority of these reports were about child sex trafficking and child sexual molestation as well as about apparent child sexual abuse images.
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Keeping our children and teens safe online can aid a lot in preventing these things from happening. Teen dating that starts online can be very dangerous, especially when the teen doesn't know the other person well.
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Internet safety should be a number one priority for parents and educators. Teaching our teens to be safe online can prevent cyber-bullying, abusive online relationships, and unsafe online friendships. It's also important to teach our teens about fake profiles on social media, online scammers, and dangerous websites that are used to manipulate us.
The task force was formed on social media in 2017 by Executive Director, Alexander Kovarovic. The task force originally started out as one online support group, but as the days went by, more and more people wanted to take part in helping. That's when Kovarovic founded the task force. Dozens of volunteers started asking if they could join and a few months later, the task force became one of the largest teen oriented organizations in the Northeast.
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Kovarovic originally founded the task force after struggling himself with depression, eating disorders, bullying, and a suicide attempt. At only 19, he's now the task force founder and Executive Director as well as a public figure, motivational speaker, and writer.
How we started
Education
The National Youth Internet Safety and Cyberbullying Task Force serves the nation in a variety of ways. We work each day in communities across the United States as well as online in multiple countries to provide education for teenagers as well as for the adults that have teens in their lives. We have over 600 printable resources for teens, parents, school counselors, and community leaders. We also have access to over 10,000 local resources and crisis centers in cities and towns across the United States and another 1,400 in Canada. We work alongside several crisis centers across the United States to help provide a safe atmosphere for teenagers and their families. Not only do we educate teens and families on our online platforms, we also educate them in the communities in which they live in. The task force is constantly visiting schools, workshops, youth groups, and after school organizations to help educate our youth on teen suicide prevention, bullying, social media, mental illnesses, and internet safety. The task force typically uses an average of over 80 hours each week for education whether it be video chatting a group of high school students or visiting a local middle school, we cover it all.
Working With Schools
Part of our job is to implement our mission and safety plans in school districts across the country. Having a positive impact on schools is something the task force strives for. Education on internet safety, teen suicide, suicidal thoughts, mental illnesses, eating disorders, self harming, and bullying plays a big role in schools. Teenagers struggle through many of these issues each day, but a lot of times, they aren't talked about much in schools. This makes it even more important for us to work alongside school districts.
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We work with schools in a variety of ways including visiting the district, sending brochures and safety cards, video-chatting with classes of teens, speaking at school events, setting up workshops during school hours, and hosting fundraisers on school grounds. We also have our Helpline and Resource Center and dozens of online support groups that teens will often use after hearing about us at a school related event or motivational speech.
Helpline and Resource Center
Our National Helpline and Resource Center is available daily during the week and on weekends starting on May 4th, 2018. The Helpline exists to help teenagers, parents, teachers, counselors, and families. Anyone can message or call the Helpline and ask for assistance regarding topics such as teen suicide prevention, bullying, teen dating abuse, mental health issues, and internet safety. When you connect to our Helpline, a Helpline counselor will aid you in finding resources and will help educate parents and adults on helping their teenagers. The Helpline also helps teenagers who feel stuck in life and like they are all alone. The Helpline provides not only the resources and education, but the support that teenagers need on a daily basis.
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The Helpline and Resource Center is available to anyone in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The Helpline can be found through our website via a pop-up window, through our toll-free number, as well as on our Facebook and Instagram pages. A newly redesigned text-line will be released in early summer of 2018.
Advocacy
As a nationally recognized organization, it's important to have a positive influence on public and government opinion on mental illness, bullying, and suicide. The task force takes on an advocacy role to help protect children and teens online. This can be used to protect teens and families and can help with suicide prevention due to bullying.
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Community members are urged to take part in advocating for the task force and the actions we take to protect our youth both online and offline. We send several petitions out each year to support new laws, guidelines, and responsibilities to help protect teens around the world.
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The task force defines advocacy as changing national policies and systems to eliminate the need for children to worry about bullying, internet safety, and online abuse. Advocacy is not just dealing with laws and policies. It's also working with schools to create new rules and policies so that bullying and abuse doesn't occur within our school districts. It's also working with social media apps, websites, and platforms to create a safe atmosphere online. Social media is both great and dangerous for teens. Teenagers can sometimes be too vulnerable online and will fall for the words of other people, even if they don't know them. Creating a safer environment online should be one of the most important things for parents and schools.
Support
Typically, we hear one thing from most teenagers who are struggling with either mental illness, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual abuse, and/or other related teen struggles. It's that they wish that they just had some kind of support while they were struggling. Often times, even teens who do have support, believe that they do not have any support. This is because a lot of teens often feel that they are extremely lonely while going through whatever it is that they're struggling with. The task force not only provides safe planning for teenagers, but it also provides a safe support system for teens who feel like no one is paying attention to them. Our Helpline and Resource Center is part of this support team. Struggling teens can interact with task force volunteers at anytime and we will work with the teen to help them create a safe action plan for the future which will include safe coping practices. We also work with parents of teens, as well as with teachers, school resource officers, counselors, and community leaders to ensure that teens in their respected community stay safe.
Research
To us, research plays a large daily impact on our mission and how it helps teenagers across the country. The task force takes pride in our research efforts and how we implement it into our mission each and everyday. Whether it's researching new statistics on the relationship between bullying and teen suicide or whether it's forming new safety plans for troubled teenagers, the task force gets it done. Research is typically the very first step in most of our work. To be able to impact teens in a positive way, you have to know how to help them. Good research can severely impact the teenage community.
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The task force involves itself in many new projects each year. Some we form and some we join, but we are constantly looking for new ways to help teens stay safe online. One of our large projects that will be formed in 2018 is the #imworthit movement. The movement will help to spread self love in the teenage community. The September 2018 movement is expected to impact over 1,000,000 teenagers online and on social media.
National Recognition
The National Youth Internet Safety and Cyberbullying Task Force is constantly recognized as one of the largest anti-cyber-bullying and teen suicide prevention organizations in the United States and Canada. We never settle for 'that's good enough'. We work very hard daily to keep our mission the number one priority throughout our work. We have been recognized numerous times by local governments across the country as well as by celebrities, public figures, and other people with a large platform. We take pride in our good reputation, our sponsors, and all of the people that constantly send us support. The task force started with an eighteen year old with big dreams, and fortunately, his dreams came true! The task force has been built from the ground up. We encourage you to always follow your dreams, because you really have no idea what will happen in the future.
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If you'd like to send us a letter in support of the task force and our mission, we encourage you to do so! We love being able to influence the nation in a very positive way.
Community
The task force takes pride in getting involved with local communities across the United States. Even as a national organization, we take the time and effort to help local communities and schools. We enjoy working alongside community members from thousands of communities across the country. Interacting with teens directly typically has a much better impact on the teens because they're personally able to hear how to deal with issues such as bullying and suicidal thoughts.
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The task force also takes pride in planning community events in hundreds of communities each year. Community events help to bring communities together for good reasons. They raise money for a good cause, help families spend time together, and impact the community directly in a positive way. Someone once said, "There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about." When communities come together and learn, teens can be drastically influenced in a very positive way.