Category: News

Online bullying: We Must also Consider Children who Bully Others [HUFFPOST TECH, by Deanna Neilson, 10/2/2015]

Online bullying among children is rife and while the potentially life-long impact on those targeted by bullies must be addressed, we cannot ignore the needs of young perpetrators either.

Action for Children recently polled 2,000 eight to 17 year olds about their internet activity and a startling one in seven told us they had bullied others online. It’s shocking that this harassment is so prevalent, but equally concerning is the fear expressed by those who said they act out on others. Nearly 60 per cent of children responded that they bullied others to fit in with a certain social group, while 40 per cent said they did so to prevent being targeted themselves.

These reasons don’t account for other issues that may also be present in children’s lives – such as low self-esteem, stress at school or being victimised themselves by peers or adults – which can contribute to a child lashing out at peers.

The best source of help for children in these situations is usually their parents. Whether your child is being bullied or bullying others, it’s important to know what’s going on in their lives you so can help address the issue and any potentially larger problems behind it.

Young people increasingly socialise on digital platforms, so parents should ask about their time online just as they ask about their day at school. Keeping a comfortable, open dialogue about their activity – not just diving in when you’re concerned about something – will not only keep you in touch with this part of their lives, but also encourage them to come to you if they’re ever concerned about issues such as bullying or strangers contacting them. Action for Children’s survey revealed that nearly 50 per cent of children did not tell anyone when they read or saw something online that made them feel uncomfortable, with one in seven saying they worried they would get in trouble if they did. This finding shows that assuring young people they can come to you is key.

Action for Children works with 300,000 children, young people, parents and carers each year and concerns about young people online come up time and time again. Many parents aren’t confident about talking to their children about their worries, sometimes because it could raise awkward conversations, sometimes because they simply don’t know very much about the platforms that young people use.

To keep children safe, adults must educate themselves about the online worlds that young people inhabit. A good way of doing this – and to open that comfortable, open dialogue – is to ask you children about it. Let them teach you about their activities and how they interact with peers. They are, after all, the experts.

Parents also need to ensure they help children keep themselves safe. Here are some tips our frontline workers share with parents:

• Discuss and agree parameters before your child joins a social networking site. Check the minimum age requirements.

• Consider whether a trusted adult should be added as a ‘friend’ and ensure your child has a ‘private’ profile.

• Talk about the potential dangers of sharing personal data.

• Remind your child that the same rules about bullying and stranger danger apply online as they do in public places and at school.

• Ensure your child knows how to report and block people online.

• Tell them they can talk to you about anything that upsets or worries them online – you’re on their side.

There’s no way to stay on top of all your child’s activity online – access at school and friends’ houses, as well as tablets and smartphones mean they are often unpoliced in the digital world. But with just a little communication, and letting children show you their expertise, parents can help children keep themselves safe online. Who knows? It might be a lot of fun.

Decoding teen sexting: what do the abbreviations mean? [Local12, by Sheila Gray, 10/2/2015]

Sexting or texting? Do you know what your children are typing when they’re hunched over their phones?

The lingo they use might not make sense to many parents, but Local 12’s Sheila Gray has some tips on how to decode what’s become almost like a secret language.

BRB (be right back) and LOL (laugh out loud) are innocent enough, but have you heard of KPC (keeping parents clueless)?

Some texts aren’t for kids, yet guess who’s sending them?

Debbie and 13-year-old Gabby Shaw are your average mom and daughter duo, and no surprise, this 8th grader loves to text.

“[How many texts] a day? I’d say about 50,” said Gabby. “I am concerned of what she may receive,” said Debbie.

We showed gabby some PG-13 acronyms, and the fact that gabby had never seen some of these is a good thing.

Head of Child Psychology at Dayton Children’s Dr. Gregory Ramey has seen it all but he says that “As a parent and a professional, I wouldn’t know what these [texts] mean.”  

We’ll keep it PG-13 and decode some of the acronyms we can actually say.

IWS means “I want sex.”

GNOC means “get naked on cam.”

GYPO  means “get your pants off.”

Also, mom and dad, kids are talking about you too…

PIR means “parent in room.”

POS means “parent over shoulder.”

H4Y means “hot for you.”

TDTM means “talk dirty to me”

Words aren’t the only tools at your disposal either.

Emojis can be strung together to depict some pretty R-rated stuff.

They’ll become one of the 40% that will have sexual intercourse during their high school years. That’s what sexting is.  

Dr. Ramey says one-third of kids sext. Be proactive and make sure your kids aren’t among them.

If you want to decrease the likelihood of your child sexting, begin at an early age to have a very open conversation with your children around junior high, that’s the best thing you could do.  

“We have a trust factor, an open relationship where we’re communicating about it,” said Debbie. “I do go through the phone periodically but it has been pretty innocent so far.”

Experts say it’s wise to check up on your teens but advise parents not to do it behind their backs.

Internet safety – The apps parents need to know about [Irish Examiner, by Helen O’Callaghan, 07/2/2015]

Protecting children online is now more difficult than ever due to the rise in popularity of photo-sharing apps, writes Helen O’Callaghan.

“It’s one of the best ways of getting them thinking about the issue,” says Simon Grehan of Webwise, the Internet safety initiative of the Professional Development Service for Teachers (PDST), which promotes Safer Internet Day in Ireland.

For parents, protecting their kids online is more challenging than ever. Just as they thought they’d got on top of Facebook, young people are moving towards photo-sharing apps like Instagram and Snapchat.

“Many parents aren’t as aware of these,” says Grehan.

We’re long past the days when keeping the computer in the kitchen meant you could monitor your child’s online activity.

Young people are accessing the Internet much more through mobile phones and tablets than they did two years ago.

This finding emerged through interviews with 1,000 students aged nine to 16 and one of their parents conducted by Dr Brian O’Neill of DIT.

The research is just about to be published. And while online activity is still mostly done at home, the fact their devices are personal means they’re free from parental supervision and mediation, points out Grehan.

So what’s the attraction of photo-sharing apps?

“Smart phones don’t have a keyboard — it’s difficult for kids to type and they don’t have as high literacy skills to communicate through language. They use images to communicate — instead of ‘I’m at the cinema with my friends’, they take a picture to show it,” says Grehan.

Apps like Instagram and Snapchat also provide more tools to be creative.

“With Instagram, they can edit photos — add filter effects to make it look like the photo was taken in the 1920s. With Snapchat, they can draw over the photo and paint little messages.”

On the surface, Snapchat looks like it has advantages. “It’s more private — you send pictures to a specific person as opposed to a public you’ve never seen.

“The unique thing is the photo disappears five seconds after it’s opened — eliminating the concern that your employer might see it in 10 years time.

“But you actually can’t be sure it’s gone, never to be seen again, because it’s easy to get a screen grab of it. A lot of kids would know how to do this,” says Grehan.

These new apps pose the usual cyber-bullying risks — possibility of sharing embarrassing or compromising photos and of posting nasty comments about someone’s pictures.

Grehan advises parents to communicate regularly with children about their online activity.

“Have them show you how they’re using apps and sites. Explain your concerns and listen to theirs. It’s very easy to use technology. It requires life experience to decide what’s appropriate to share and what isn’t.”

Laura Cullen, 17, is in fifth year at St Clare’s Comprehensive, Manorhamilton.

“The app I most use is Instagram, otherwise YouTube and art-sharing websites. I used to be on Facebook but there’s limited privacy.

“I don’t like the way social networking sites perpetuate the idea that you need to have a say on whatever you like and that there’s no consequence to what you say online.

“I’m very much in favour of technology. Websites don’t bully people —other people do. I’m involved in the Webwise youth panel.

“It’s mostly around raising awareness through competitions and sending posters to schools.

“It’s difficult to say how many hours a day I spend online. I feel it’s a very continuous thing — even though you have your phone down or in your pocket, it’s continuously picking up information online.”

Oisín Bowyer, 14, is in third year at Carndonagh Community School. “Here in Donegal we’ve had two suicides related to cyber-bullying.

“It’s important to do something. I’m an ambassador for Safer Internet Day. I spend two hours max a day online — below the average.

“I like Facebook — I think it’s more mature. Some young people are very naïve. The internet is a very open space.

“Everything you say can come back to haunt you. It’s important to think before you post that picture or hit that send button.”

A transition-year student at Deele College, Raphoe, Co Donegal Sean Murphy is 16. “I use Facebook a lot and Snapchat. I like that I can talk to my brothers in Australia or someone down the road in an instant.

AS we gear up for Safer Internet Day on Tuesday, 15,000 students in 100 schools across Ireland are running awareness-raising events around cyber-bullying.

“I’m not particularly a fan of the selfie — I don’t have the chiselled face other guys would envy!

“I use an alias to get around [future] employers seeing stuff about me. I’m definitely aware around cyber-bullying — I’d be pretty abrupt about stopping talking to people who’d consider taking an aggressive or mocking manner with me.

“I’m on the Webwise panel — I’ve always been an activist around keeping others safe and getting involved in school mentoring programmes.”

On Monday, Webwise will launch ‘MySelfie – Primary Anti-Cyber Bullying’, a curriculum resource targeted at fifth and sixth class primary students.

“It’s a series of short animations that provide starting points for classroom discussions around emotions driving bullying, emotional impact on victims and how children can be agents for positive change in relation to bullying.

Be safe online

* Be the one to introduce your child to the Internet. Together, find exciting, fun websites — makes it easier to share both positive and negative experiences in future.

* Agree with child rules for internet use in your home. Discuss when and for how long; how to treat personal info (name, address, telephone, email); how to behave towards others when online; what type of sites/activities are OK/not OK in your family.

* Teach social networking teens how to use privacy or security settings of a site. All responsible sites have a safety centre and a block and reporting system.

* Talk about risks of meeting online ‘friends’ in person. Children shouldn’t meet strangers they’ve met online without parental approval and without accompaniment by adult, friends or others they trust.

* Teach child about evaluating and being critically aware of online information. Not all is correct, accurate or relevant.

* Avoid being over-critical of your child’s internet exploration. If they come across adult material, open discussion about the content and make rules for this kind of activity.

* Encourage respect for others — being polite, using correct language, not yelling (writing in capital letters) or harassing others.

* Let your child show you what he likes to do online.

* Positive aspects of the internet outweigh the negatives — there are millions of age-appropriate sites for younger children. Encourage child to use these.

Teens urged to ‘think twice’ before posting online [Independent, by Nicola Anderson, 10/2/2015]

Teenagers working on a cyber-bullying project have told how ‘nearly everybody they know’ has been subject to online abuse of some description.

A new report reveals that young people are experiencing greater bullying on social media platforms and are encountering more harmful images and content because they are spending increasing amounts of time online on their smartphones and tablets.

One-in-five children in Ireland say they have been bothered by something online in the past year – double the figure reported in a survey in 2011.

The new Net Children Go Mobile report, launched to mark Safer Internet Day finds that Instagram is the most popular media-sharing platform, with some 42pc of 9-16 year olds using it to share their photos.

Brian O’Neill, Director of Research, Enterprise and Innovation Services at Dublin Institute of Technology, who compiled the report along with Thuy Dinh of DIT, said that young people are doing more of everything online.

“Because internet use is now a much more private experience with less direct parental supervision, parents more than ever need to communicate with their children about their online experiences,” he said. Speaking at the launch at Dublin Castle, Damien English, TD urged young people to “think twice” before they acted on an urge to post something online that might be hurtful.

“Just hold back – think of the impact it might have on somebody’s life,” he said.

Teens from the Dublin City Comhairle na nÓg youth council told the Irish Independent that almost every young person they know has been subjected to some form of online bullying.

Irish Independent

Teenage girls warned off ‘sexting’ pics after images leaked in North Herts [Mercury, by Michael Havis, 04/2/2015]

Teenage girls have been warned not to send indecent pictures to their boyfriends after a number of snaps turned up online.

North Herts chief inspector Julie Wheatley revealed there have been several reports from concerned parents whose daughters were coaxed into sending indecent photos.

The images – which are illegal if the girl is under 18 – have then been posted on public websites after the relationship ended.

Mrs Wheatley told the Mercury: “It concerns the parents and the girls affected massively. I just want people to be aware that this is an offence.

“My officers have been going into schools to do a personal safety awareness campaign around this issue.”

In the wake of the news, The Mercury contacted all of the secondary schools and colleges in the district for comment. Only two spoke out about the issue.

Jed Whelan, head teacher of Fearnhill School in Letchworth GC, said: “We are aware of the issue around safe use of the internet.

“We make our students aware of the dangers of inappropriate use of the internet and are constantly reaffirming that. I’m sure all schools will do the same.”

Meanwhile, Martin Brown, head teacher at Hitchin Boys’ School , said: “Our PSHE programme covers all aspects of e-safety, and our e-safety policy also refers to the dangers of online communication.

“In addition, we have held evenings for parents to provide guidance on similar internet-related issues.”

As the school authority, Hertfordshire County Council (HCC) ran a survey that found fewer than 1 per cent of parents thought their children used chat rooms, although nearly 10 per cent of youngsters did.

Councillor Chris Hayward – cabinet member for enterprise, education and skills at HCC– said: “The council is committed to working with our partners to keep young people safe both on and offline.

“By talking to them about what is appropriate to share with others we can do our best to help protect them from potential dangers.”

Claire Lilley, NSPCC lead for child safety online, said: “Young people may think ‘sexting’ is harmless but it can mean they are committing a crime.

“It may also leave them vulnerable to blackmail and bullying and the humiliation and embarrassment of everyone they know seeing the images.

“There is also the risk that sexual predators will try to get hold of the images, which we know is a very real risk.”

The charity said the problem was becoming more prevalent and that it had held 351 counselling sessions with affected children in 2012/13 – an increase of 28 per cent on the previous year.

In a statement issued to this newspaper, Hertfordshire Constabulary warned that posting the photos online is a criminal offence that is taken very seriously, and that those responsible would be pursued.

Police are advising young people to be mindful of privacy settings when sharing information online, to only share details such as mobile numbers with trusted friends, and never to send indecent images.

Smart babies can spot a bully at one year old [The Telegraph, by Agency, 05/2/2015]

Babies are smarter than previously thought and can understand complex social situations at 13 months old, psychologists have claimed.

They can comprehend what constitutes bullying, friendship and what it means to be a bystander, a study found.

In an experiment with puppets the children responded to scenarios in a way that suggested they were more engaged than had been expected.

They were observed to have “strong feelings about how people should deal with a character who hits others”, the researchers said.

The psychologists asked parents of 48 infants aged around one to bring them into the lab for the experiment.

The babies sat in front of a stage where two puppets, A and B, appeared, initially interacting in a friendly manner.

The psychologists, from the University of Missouri in the US, then used the puppets to play out various scenarios.

A third puppet, C, was introduced and was deliberately knocked down by B as A looked on. In the next scenario, B knocked down C, but A was absent.

A third scenario involved C being accidentally knocked down as A looked on.

The researchers monitored how long the babies looked at the stage to gauge their interest and engagement.

They found babies looked longer at things that were not expected.

The study is published in the journal Psychological Science.

Cyber bullying finds new platform [The Daily News, by David Vitrano, 04/2/2015]

Washington Parish Sheriff Randy Seal cautions parents about a new social media tool that has emerged in Washington Parish and is being used as a mechanism for bullying.

Yik Yak was launched in 2013 and works by combining the technologies of GPS and instant messages. Very simply, it is an anonymous bulletin board on which users can post comments to be read by anyone within a limited geographical area.

On its website, Yik Yak describes itself as “…an anonymous messaging app that allows users to create and view posts — called Yaks — within a 10-mile radius. Users can also expand the conversation by posting replies to existing Yaks.”

The misuse of Yik Yak to bully two students has already been reported in Washington Parish. The Sheriff’s Office has been notified and the WPSO Cyber Crimes Investigator is handling the complaints.

In early December, two University of Central Oklahoma students were arrested for posting Yik Yak threats to shoot up the university. Students from Drake University in Iowa were arrested in September for similar threats. Other incidents have occurred at the University of Southern Mississippi, Penn State University, the University of Georgia and other schools, which resulted in the arrests of students making the threats. In January, a 16-year old high school student in Oxford, Ala., was arrested and charged with making a terroristic threat on Yik Yak.

“Since I took office, we have developed a mechanism for investigating crimes involving all social media, including the Internet,” Washington Parish Sheriff Randy Seal said. “Our Cyber Crimes Investigator has been certified in Mobile Forensics, Computer Forensics and Cyber Investigations. He provides a valuable service to parents, local schools and law enforcement throughout the parish.”

Seal said parents should know what their children are doing on computers.

“I strongly encourage parents to closely monitor their children’s use of all social media,” Seal added. “While social media itself is not bad, the misuse of social media as a tool to threaten, bully or disseminate false information can be a criminal act. We will aggressively go after anyone making social media threats to any individual, group, school or school function.”

Seal said any parent, teacher or other person who knows of cyber bullying or threats on any form of social media is asked to report the matter to the Sheriff’s Office at 985-839-3434.

Understanding and defining bullying – adolescents’ own views [Archives of Public Health, by Lisa Hellström, Louise Persson and Curt Hagquist, 02/2/2015]

Abstract (provisional)

Background

The negative consequences of peer-victimization on children and adolescents are major public health concerns which have been subjected to extensive research. Given all efforts made to analyze and estimate the social and health consequences of peer-victimization, the adolescents’ own experiences and understandings have had surprisingly little impact on the definition of bullying. Therefore, the aim of the current study is to explore adolescents’ definitions of bullying.

Methods

A questionnaire study (n = 128) and four focus group interviews (n = 21) were conducted among students aged 13 and 15. First, gender and age differences were analyzed with respect to what behaviors are considered bullying (questionnaire data). Second, analysis of what bullying is (focus group interviews) was conducted using qualitative content analysis.

Results

The adolescents own understanding and definition of bullying didn’t just include the traditional criteria of repetition and power imbalance, but also a criterion based on the health consequences of bullying. The results showed that a single but hurtful or harmful incident also could be considered bullying irrespective of whether the traditional criteria were fulfilled or not. Further, girls and older students had a more inclusive view of bullying and reported more types of behaviors as bullying compared to boys and younger students.

Conclusions

The results of the current study adds to the existing literature by showing that adolescents consider the victim’s experience of hurt and harm as a criterion for defining bullying and not only as consequences of bullying. This may be of special relevance for the identification and classification of bullying incidents on the internet where devastating consequences have been reported from single incidents and the use of the traditional criteria of intent, repetition and power imbalance may not be as relevant as for traditional bullying. It implies that the traditional criteria included in most definitions of bullying may not fully reflect adolescents’ understanding and definition of bullying. Assessments of bullying behaviors that ask adolescents to strictly adhere to the traditional definition of bullying might not identify all adolescents experiencing peer victimization and therefore not provide estimates of prevalence rates reflecting adolescents’ own understanding of bullying.

The complete article is available as in  http://www.archpublichealth.com/content/pdf/2049-3258-73-4.pdf . The fully formatted PDF and HTML versions are in production.

Study: Bullying victims nine times more likely to suffer from depression[ The Copenhagen Post, by Philip Tees, 30/1/2015]

Results of Danish study not surprising for experts

According to new Danish research published in the scientific periodical Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the risk of suffering from depression is increased by a factor of nine among those who are the victims of bullying.

Maria Gullander, a PhD in public health and epidemiology from the University of Copenhagen and the lead author of the paper, told the science publication Videnskab.dk that the study sent a clear message.

“We need to take this seriously,” she said. “Our study shows that one of the consequences of bullying can be depression.”

Poul Videbech, a professor in psychiatry at Aarhus University, agrees with the findings. “It is an interesting and important result. I can recognise it from clinical practice,” he said.

“We know that bullying affects one’s self-confidence and self-esteem. So it is easily imaginable that bullying pushes towards depression and maybe triggers it or makes it worse than it otherwise would have been.”

The chicken or the egg?
The study is the biggest of its kind to date and involved 5,485 people in employment being interviewed three times at two-and-a-half-year intervals. Each time the participants were asked questions to determine if they were being bullied and whether they were suffering from depression.

Extra interviews were conducted with 1,481 of the participants: half of whom were the victims of bullying and showed signs of depression or anxiety while the rest were selected randomly.

Gullander explains that despite the strength of the results, it is still difficult to say if bullying leads to depression or whether depression increases the perception of being bullied.

“The problem is that we still can’t say anything conclusively about the extent to which your depressive symptoms make you more vulnerable to negative relations,” she said.

Educators get tips on how to deal with student sexting [Montreal Gazette, by Brenda Branswell,30/1/2015]

A high school student snaps an intimate photo of herself and sends it to her boyfriend, but then frets after they break up about what might happen to it

Maybe nothing happens. Or maybe the sexual image gets shared and posted online.

“Sexting” or sending sexual images over cellphones, was the focus of a talk Friday at the English Montreal School Board where staff gathered to hear Noni Classen from the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

“It’s hard to measure, but what we do know is it’s happening much more than it’s reported,” Classen said of the practice among teenagers.

The Winnipeg-based charitable organization has seen about a 10 per cent increase in cases dealing with “sexting” on cybertip.ca, its tip line for reporting the online sexual exploitation of children.

“And we know that we’re only getting the tip of the iceberg so we can say that it is a pervasive problem in that it’s occurring much more regularly than it used to.”— Noni Classen of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection

“And we know that we’re only getting the tip of the iceberg so we can say that it is a pervasive problem in that it’s occurring much more regularly than it used to,” said Classen, the centre’s director of education.

They hear about it when it becomes a problem for a kid, she said. They know there are cases involving boys as well, but girls are overrepresented in the reports they receive and what they hear.

The centre looked at 108 cases of teenage sexting reported to its tip line of photos being posted or shared. The vast majority of cases involved girls — 93. Parents knew about it in 35 cases and schools in only 19 instances.

Most of the reporting to the centre’s tip line is about adults involving things like child pornography and luring. But since 2005, they’ve started seeing an increase in reporting from kids because of this problem that they had “created content and it was causing distress for them. So they became the reporting person and the victim,” Classen said.

“We started looking at this going okay, there’s a problem. And our law enforcement partners … they started saying: ‘Oh my gosh, we’re being inundated by this.’ And then we started getting calls from schools and so realized we really need to take a look at this and put something together that’s more of a framework and a structured way to be walking through these cases to support kids.”
Resource guide

The centre has produced a resource guide for schools and families about “self/peer exploitation.” The section for families can be downloaded for free from the centre’s website. It also has a website, www.needhelpnow.ca, that offers information for teens who have been affected by the sharing of sexual images and videos with suggestions for how they can try to get them taken off the Internet.

Schools often call it cyberbullying and it’s because content has been created and then shared with other people beyond it’s intended recipient, Classen said.

“You also get a range. So you get some kids who it’s not a big deal, but they know that it’s a problem if there’s pictures being shared so we need to get the pictures down, we need to get the pictures contained. Other kids can’t stop worrying about it. It’s a huge source of anxiety for them. It’s a huge source of anxiety for their families … concern for what do we do, how do we deal with this?”
Can became suicidal

For others it’s so distressing they can became suicidal, Classen said.

It has become one of the issues they’re dealing with, said Pela Nickoletopoulos, principal at Lester B. Pearson High School in Montreal North, who has had to intervene in a few cases.

“It is something that we come across in the school often enough,” said Jaimie Dimopoulos, a guidance counsellor at Rosemount High School.

“In the events that I’ve seen, it’s the students that are coming to see us because they feel stuck and they’re not sure what else they can do at this point,” Dimopoulos said.

In her experience, it has typically been girls sending pictures to their boyfriends “and then they’re kind of stuck with the boyfriends have this content now and they don’t feel safe with it, or they’ve now entered into an argument so they’re not sure how this will be used,” Dimopoulos said.