Technology has become such an everyday part of life that most of us would be hard pressed to do without our various forms of communications gadgetry. For many children, however, the computers they use at home and school and their increasingly sophisticated mobile phones have provided a fast connection to fear. These children are among the rising number of young technology users who have fallen victim to a growing new culture: cyber-bullying. Bullies have always been cowards, but never has it been so easy for the perpetrators to spread their venom with such accuracy and impact from a safe distance. Emailing, internet chatrooms, websites and texting provide a rich choice of conduits for the bully to utilise, often from the comfort of their own homes. And as technology becomes ever more sophisticated, so the job gets easier.
Taking it seriously
The Government is well aware of cyber-bullying and encourages schools to act on complaints of malicious texting and emailing. Advice for teachers, posted on the TeacherNet website, encourages teachers to warn children to be careful who they give their phone number to, to keep a record of the date and time of any offensive messages they receive and to let a member of staff see these. It goes on to say: ‘When pupils report bullying text messages the school needs to take the complaint seriously and the child’s family might also need to contact the police. The same also applies to malicious emails sent by other pupils.’ But this advice relies on young people having the courage to report incidents to their teachers in the first place. They must be confident that the time-poor teachers will routinely be both accessible
and sympathetic.
So what can schools do to ensure their students can enjoy the obvious benefits of the latest technology without putting themselves at risk from the misery of the cyber-bullies? Ironically, technology itself provides some of the
most innovative solutions to this problem. Groundbreaking technology companies such as Truancy Call Ltd and Securus Software Limited have come up with products that beat the cyber-bullies without interfering with the functionality of computers or mobile phones.
The recent flurry of ‘happy slapping’ attacks, where a physical assault is recorded on mobile phone cameras before being circulated by email and even on the Internet, is a cruelly efficient way of hitting the victims both physically and mentally. Earlier this year, children’s charity NCH revealed that 16 per cent of 11-19 year olds have been threatened or harassed by text messages, five percent have been bullied in internet chatrooms and a further four per cent admit to having been targeted by bullies via email. But many believe this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. In 2002 the children’s helpline, Childline, reported that 87 per cent of young people were too embarrassed to speak out about bullying, and two thirds feared getting into trouble if they spoke out. Despite this, the charity reports a 42 per cent rise in the number of children counselled on bullying last year.