Category: cyber safety

Cyberbullying – a clearer focus

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I felt it was time to update some of the advice and information I have previously shared about online bullying. – As  Safer Internet Day approaches there are many articles appearing online about ‘cyberbullying’ and conferences and events taking place, dedicated only to this type of bullying.

Bullying is behaviour that makes people feel frightened, hurt, threatened and left out. It impacts on a person’s ability to feel in control of themselves (their ‘agency’) and to respond effectively. This behaviour can harm physically and emotionally and the threat is typically sustained. This behaviour takes place in a variety of places, including online.

The research I undertook in late 2014 provided a picture of what types of behaviour children were experiencing and where it was taking place. The findings confirmed what many already thought while continuing to surprise many others.

Face to face bullying accounted for the majority of bullying incidents. The three most common behaviours experienced when being bullied face to face were:

Name calling

Hurtful Comments

Rumours

8,000 children and young people from across the country took part in the research. 30% of them said they had experienced bullying in the last 12 months. Of the incidents they experienced:

60% took place in person

21% took place both in person and online

19% tool place online only

They also told us that only 6% of bullying started online – and it was usually related to something that happened in school or face to face. The behaviour  can then continue online, face to face and sometimes both.

The three most common behaviour experienced online were:

                Name Calling

                Hurtful Comments

                Verbal Abuse

This shows that there is little difference between the behaviours experienced – only where they took place.

This has helped us work with colleagues to develop local surveys and questionnaires that ask the right questions, not ‘Were you bullied’ and ‘were you cyberbullied?’ But ask ‘Were you bullied?’ ‘What was the behaviour and where did this happen?’ Children and young people were able to tell us very clearly things like ‘I was called names and this happened on the bus and on Facebook’.

There should be little focus on where it took place – it was still bullying.

The findings from the research show that online bullying is more public and more visible. This is what contributes to the notion that it is a ‘bigger’ or ‘increasing’ problem. Bullying behaviour is not always seen by lots of people – threats and manipulative behaviour still takes place largely in private – away form everyone else.  This is still the most common type of bullying; sneaky, under the radar behaviour, carried out in places where there is little or no supervision.

So what are the risks with this?

The main risk is that we have, and often still do, focus heavily on online or cyber bullying and  have almost started to ignore the less public types of bullying.  I even get asked about what has happened to ‘traditional’ bullying. We seem to have developed this notion that the only thing to be concerned about is the stuff that happens online. This is not to say what is happening online isn’t concerning, of course it is, but so is the behaviour our children and young people continue to experience face to face – and sometimes both face to face and online.

We do not need to develop specific polices for online bullying, but we need to ensure that  all of our anti-bullying policies and practices reflect that things happen both face to face and online. This approach is in line with international research and best practice. When we talk about bullying we mean bullying that happens face to face and online.

When talking to children and young people recently about new national policy they told me they found it strange that people still talked about ‘cyber’ bullying as ‘cyber’ is just not a word they use for anything.  The distinction between online and offline isn’t as straightforward as some adults may think. Relationships play out online and in person – whether chatting face to face or  on Twitter or Snapchat – it’s all talking to friends.

Young people told us some very interesting things about their lives online. The majority of young people (81%) consider their online friends to be all or mostly the same as in real life. Only 4% of the 8,000 surveyed said they did not know the people they were ‘friends’ with online.

Crucially, 92% of children who experienced bullying online knew the person bullying them. This goes some way to challenge the ever present line that anonymity is one of the driving factors behind bullying online. Young people interact and socialise with an extended network of other people they are connected to through school, family communities and friendships as well as similar interests in music or sport.

They also use social media  to communicate –the purpose of using smart phones, consoles or laptops is primarily about staying in-touch with friends, something which is as important for young people today as it was 40 years ago. They have different means at their disposal but the principle is the same.

On of the challenges we still face is the belief that if something happens onlineit did not take place in school and the school or teacher cannot do anything about it. Our advice on this has been consistent – we respond to what happened to someone – not where it happened. If a child or young person decides to inform their teacher – they are investing in them as an adult they trust to help them – that last thing we should be doing is sending them away.

I was talking to a teacher about this earlier this week and she feels frustrated that an incident that happened at a swing park between two pupils in the same class is being ignored by some colleagues because of where it took place. The school here is in a great position to help resolve this – they don’t need to do all the work but could lead on helping the children they know feel safer or behave more respectfully. It is the same if it happens on Facebook. Respond to what happened not where or when. Respond to how someone feels – that way you can role model effective ways of dealing with relationship and interpersonal difficulties.

Bullying is also about relationships – not technology.  We must focus on equipping young people with the skills to conduct themselves online in a more respectful manner; the skills to manage their environments safely, and to develop their confidence and abilities to negotiate relationships and problems. This is built on promoting and developing resilience. But we also have to equip parents with the knowledge and understanding about how social media and the other places children and young people go online work; how to make them safe and, most importantly, how to talk to their children about using them. respectme offers free training for parents on this.

‘Cyberbullying’ is bullying; it is about relationships that are not healthy or being managed or role modelled well. It is behaviour done by someone to someone else, it is the ‘where’ this is taking place that is new. The behaviour appears to be migrating, as children spend more time online, the behaviour they have always exhibited and experienced goes with them.

Adult fear and anxiety  has long been the biggest hurdle in dealing with bullying online. It has had a very high media profile at times and it appears ’new’.  For parents or adults who do not use social media or connect with their friends using the internet, this can be a challenging and, at times, bewildering experience.

Lots of colleagues have said they are ‘technophobes’ or are not ‘tech savvy’ and have voiced how much they dislike Facebook or twitter. We have maintained that if you work with children and young people or if you are a parent or carer, that is no longer good enough. You need to know! For some that will require a real effort to spend time and utilise their relationships to learn. We cannot abdicate responsibility for this to software. We need to connect and learn about how young people use the internet and the phones or laptops they access it from.

Many adults have experience of managing risk when working with children and young people, and this is a new place for us to consider. We need to be as imaginative and creative with the internet as we have been in other places.

What is not bullying?

One other phenomenon that has emerged is the conflating of all online behaviours and risks under one heading. Sexting is not bullying, it is largely a consensual thing, part of adolescents exploring relationships and attraction. Forcing someone to take a naked picture of themself or part of their body naked is not bullying, it is abusive and coercive behaviour. Threatening someone to do something sexually is not bullying – it is sexually aggressive behaviour. Some guidance in the UK had stated that grabbing a girl’s chest or putting your hand up her skirt is a type of bullying.  We  do not agree with this.  That behaviour is a type of sexual assault. We must not dilute abusive behaviour. This is not an attempt to demonise children and young people, but to address the fact that if we dilute sexually aggressive behaviour we run the risk of normalising it. People are still of the opinion that ‘bullying is a normal part of growing up’ or ‘It’s just bullying’. This is why we work closely with colleagues who work in areas of violence against women and girls particularly, to make sure we give a consistent message that sexually aggressive behaviour is never acceptable and, while bullying and abusive behaviour can be linked, they are not the same thing.

There have been high profile examples of blackmail, extortion and threatening behaviour online that have been referred to in the media as cyberbullying.  We need to be clear about what we are talking about.  If someone is targeted, and forced to hand over money under the threat that someone will release pictures of them, they are being criminally extorted – not bullied. Using the term ‘cyberbullying’  to describe a host of other abusive behaviours only adds to the fear and confusion on how to respond.

As we move forward we must ensure that we focus on the fact that when we talk about bullying, we are talking about behaviour that happens online and face to face.

Brian

Briefing on Cyberbullying

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This is a copy of the briefing used as part of a Members briefing in January 2013 – it is the basis for our contribution to a cross-party debate this month – I hope you find this useful

Member Debate – Cyberbullying – Briefing

respectme Scotland’s anti-bullying service

respectme is Scotland’s anti-bullying service. It is managed by SAMH, The Scottish Association for Mental Health and LGBT Youth Scotland. The service was launched in 2007 and builds adult confidence and competence to recognise and deal with all kinds of bullying behaviour. The service provides strategic policy support, offers skills development training and campaigns to raise awareness. The service was externally evaluated between 2009 and 2011 and was found to be a ‘catalyst for change’ and was a ‘credible’ and ‘robust’ anti-bullying service. The service was instrumental in developing the National Approach to Anti-Bullying for Scotland’s Children and Young People and ensures all stakeholders operate in-step with this approach.

respectme’s resources and approach to anti-bullying is recognised internationally. Bullying is behaviour that makes people feel frightened, hurt, threatened and left out. It impacts on a person’s ability to feel in control of themselves (their ‘agency’) and to respond effectively. This behaviour can harm physically and emotionally and the threat is typically sustained. This behaviour takes place in a variety of places, including on-line.

Cyberbullying was an emerging issue when the service launched early 2007 and at the request of the then Minister, respectme delivered a campaign on cyberbullying that urged parents to ‘connect’ with what their children were doing on-line not ‘disconnect’ from the internet. We found that parents and adults who understood how social media worked, what it was used for and how to make it safe or monitor it, were much more confident when dealing with bullying that happened on-line.

Over the year’s respectmedeveloped resources, web content and a very popular 2 day training event on cyberbullying (in 2011/12 we delivered 24 sessions). We were able to refine and develop confidence with our core messages about cyberbullying and communicate these to our stakeholders.

These key messages include:

Cyberbullying is bullying – it is still about relationships that are not healthy or being managed or role modelled well. It is behaviour done by someone to someone else, it is the ‘where’ this is taking place that is new. The behaviour appears to be migrating, as children spend more time on-line, the behaviour they have always exhibited and experienced comes with them.

It is important to include cyberbullying in your policies and procedures on anti-bullying and not see it as something entirely separate – it is still rooted in relationships between people.

The internet is a place, not a thing – for many the internet is a tool that they use for a variety of things, buying, sending messages or research. To most children and young people it is a social space that they spend time in and use to stay in touch with their friends. This principle underpins all of our anti-bullying work in this area. This led to a very successful video campaign in 2011 called ‘She’s still going somewhere’, the message for adults was, whether your child is going into town or online, they are still going somewhere and you need to be just as interested and concerned about where they are going and who they are going with.

Like all places children and young people go to, there are risks.

Children and young people do not differentiate a great deal between friendships online and in person – most of their interactions on-line or using their smart phones is with friends and people they interact with in other areas such a schools or where they live.

Children and young people use this to communicate –the purpose of using smart phones or laptops is primarily about staying in-touch with friends, this is as important for young people today as it was 40 years ago. They have different means at their disposal but the principle is the same.

Adult fear and anxiety – has been the biggest hurdle in dealing with cyberbullying. This has had a very high media profile at times and it appears ’new’ and for parents or adults who do not use social media or connect with their friends using the internet, this is a challenging and at times bewildering experience. There are so many types of phones, connections and complex safety features and so on. That is why respectme’s training focusses on developing adult skills and confidence and their understanding of  how and why technology is used this way.

Lots of colleagues have said they are ‘technophobes’ or are not ‘tech savvy’ and have voiced how much they dislike Facebook or twitter. We have maintained that if you work with children and young people or are a parent or carer – that is no longer good enough. You need to know! For some that will require a real effort to spend time and utilise the relationship they have to learn this.  We cannot abdicate responsibility for this to software. We need to connect and learn about how young people use the internet and the phones or laptops they access it from. They use it mainly to talk to and meet their friends.

Many adults have experience of managing risk when working with children and young people, this is a new place for us to consider. We need to be as imaginative and creative with the internet as we have been in other places.

respectmeundertook extensive research on October 2011 on this issue that both confirmed our messages and informed the work we do.

This research involved 3,944 young people from 29 of Scotland’s 32 local authorities aged 8 – 19 years. It confirmed that children and young people are online almost every day. They use phones and laptops, boys also use games consoles to connect with friends and socialise. For the most part, the friends they talk to at school are also the friends they chat to on-line. They do not draw any difference between talking to a friend on the phone, on BBM or on the way to school – it’s all talking to friends.

16% say they have been cyberbullied – this is reflective of the findings from colleagues in the rest of the UK

25% worry about cyberbullying,

55% say they are online every day for 1 – 3 hours, nearly 10% claim they are on for 5 hrs. or more

Facebook (68%) and BlackBerry Messenger (28%) are two most popular platforms – Blackberry Phones are the most popular as instant messaging is free between handsets and having unlimited messages is what children are looking for. This enabled respectmeto tell parents that these were the two platforms that they really needed to connect with, learn how to use them and how to make them safe. There are so many places to connect and chat on-line that it can be off putting for parents but not unlike adults, children and young people tend to gravitate towards the same places.

63% of children bullied online knew the person who was doing this and 40% of the time this carried over into school. Children who had been bullied on-line stated that reading a nasty comment was worse that hearing it or knowing it had been said. Children who had not been bullied on-line were ambivalent about the difference in impact.

The impact of this behaviour is the same as the impact of other types of bullying, fear, anxiety and worry about repercussions. It is likely for many children and young people that if they are being bullied, say in school, it is highly likely they may also experience bullying behaviours online as well.

71% of children who were bullied would like to tell a parent or carer,  43% would tell a friend and 31% would want to tell a teacher.

Schools have struggled at times to deal with bullying that happens on-line as they believe it happens ‘out of school’, respectme’s take on this is that bullying happens to individuals, the impacts are felt by them and they take this with them wherever they go. If they tell their teacher something happened and they are worried, like any disclosure of this kind, teachers and schools must respond in a supportive way. Children will be telling a teacher for good reason; they believe they can help them.

Cyberbullying can be more intrusive and children and young people may find fewer ‘escape routes’ as switching off their phone is rarely an option. While messages can be blocked, deleted or reported, they can be seen by hundreds of others within minutes and incidents can spiral out of control very quickly. A comment made while angry to a friend can be seen and shared in no time at all.

respectme has develop very successful guidance for children and young people on bullying, staying safe and their own behaviour on-line as well as resource for adults.

Current research on this phenomenon in other parts of the world does support respectme’s assertion that cyberbullying is effectively addressed when seen as part of our whole anti-bullying approach. When we discuss bullying, we discuss what happens on-line as well as face-to-face; children are not making the same distinction adults are.

There is a need to help adults develop skills and confidence in this area though. There is still a gap between what they currently know and what they need to know about the platforms and devices children and young people use.

Brian Donnelly

Director respectme

January 2013

Thought’s behind this years campign…

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As we prepare to launch our new video next week, I find myself , reflecting on how bullying is an emotive and at times a complex issue. It can bring about extreme reactions in people, from genuine anger and aggression to a dismissive ‘never did me any harm, it’s all part of growing up’ attitude.

I still encounter both attitudes and believe that how some people choose to frame bullying is not at all helpful. Bullying does not build character. Trust, love and good role models build character. This helps us deal with things like bullying, it helps build resilience. I find the attitude that bullying is ‘normal’ and builds ‘character’ in practice leads to very poor responses form adults when dealing with bullying.

Young people have always been consistent in what they tell us about bullying. For the most part they want it to stop with the minimum of fuss and when they are being bullied, they feel like they have lost something, lost the ability to feel in control and in-charge of themselves. Bullying is about relationships, relationships that are not working in the way they should. It’s about relationships that are not being managed or role modelled effectively.

We are taught about’ being friends’ at a very early age, I have witnessed this sometimes with children as  young as three year olds being told they’ need to be friends’. This just isn’t the case; where else in life are we told we all have to be friends? We should really be telling children that when they are together they need to be nice to each other, respect each other but that they need to be friends? It is unrealistic and gives children the first currency to barter with at school or nursery.

Learning to navigate relationships in the community, at home or in school is a journey we all go on. We learn to manage or even avoid conflict, that friends can fall out and it doesn’t mean things will never be fixed. It was this thought process that gave the service its name. It was while explaining the that it was okay to say ‘listen, you don’t have to like me but you do have to respect me’ and that respecting me does not have to mean you try to connect with me and learn about me – it can just mean ‘leave me alone’.  There are ways to behave when you do not like someone or agree with someone that is respectful. Our response to this does not need to be to bully or intimidate, to exclude and cause fear and anxiety.

As part of this year’s anti-bullying week activities (November 19 – 23), our campaign will use a video to deliver this message; a message spoken by young people to their peers and to the adults in their life.

That message is this ‘You don’t have to like me, you don’t have to agree with me or like doing the same things I do but you do have to respect me. So leave me be, don’t just try to bully me, talk to me even and hey, you do your thing and I’ll do mine’.

This very straightforward message is one we want people to share across their social networks; it is how we want adults to talk to children about how they get on with their peers, how they approach anti-bullying work and how children should learn to set the parameters for relationships in their lives.

This message translates into anti-bullying training and policies that promote respectful relationships that value diversity, equality, and children’s rights.   If you don’t agree with someone or think they are out-of-step from how you think or feel – you do not need to respond in a way that makes them feel hurt, frightened or left out. You can learn about what makes us different, or, you can learn to leave the people you might not like or agree with alone.
That action alone would make a great deal of children and young people much happier and feel much safer than they currently do.

 

Brian Donnelly

This year’s anti-bullying week competition – what have we learned?

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It has been such an interesting experience to go through each of the entries into this year’s competition – as it is every year. This year we have around 2,000 entries. That’s 2,000 individual pieces of feedback on ‘What bullying means to me’.
The question posed is very deliberate – it’s not about finding out what children and young people think about bullying or what is a good message or poster for your peers is but what does it mean to you. Having been involved in every competition we have ran in the last 5 years, I have always paid attention to the emerging themes and issues from the thousands of submissions. A couple of years ago the theme of loss and helplessness emerged very clearly and helped us understand the impact bullying had on a person’s agency, their capacity for self-management.
It was very clear that bullying took something away from children and young people; we took this notion and discussed it further and how effective responses gave something back, so emerged our thinking on agency. (See initial blog)
When explaining agency to young people I have often used the analogy of a ‘typical day’. A day where you get up, have your breakfast, you know you are off to the bus-stop to meet friends, what classes you’ll enjoy, pay attention in or even avoid and have a good idea of what you’ll be doing after school. Children and young people recognise this scenario and that they will have experienced this.
When a person is being bullied, they say that is not their day. They are not in charge of how they get to feel, someone else is. It affects how they felt when they wake up, if they eat anything, the nerves heading for the bus perhaps or what someone will say to them if they walk in this door at school. Will they be asked to go out tonight or ignored again? Again, some of them recognise this day too.
There are so many of the entries this year, especially in the creative writing category that have reflected this very clearly. There are many stories where children and young people reflect a feeling of nervousness, fear and a lack of control over situations that sometimes starts the moment they get up. They describe in vivid detail days and experiences they have where others make them feel worried and scared, where people affect their ability to learn.They descibe physical responses too, legs shaking, hands trembling and feeling very cold.
This writing reaffirms what we believe about bullying and agency, they describe individuals who are not agents in their own lives; they are not in charge of how they feel and our responses must focus on restoring this loss.
When children and young people are asked to reflect on what bullying means to them, they describe feelings of hurt, fear, loneliness, worry and anger. They describe scenarios where friendships turn sour, where people are left out and where being new to a school or a group can intially be a very difficult experience. They also express a real desire for people to return to being friends. It is the most common solution put forward, one where relationships are repaired and people ‘get on’. They offer very little by way of wanting to see people ‘punished’.
 The art work submitted, ranging from posters to drawings and sculpture reflects many of the same issues. Images of feeling trapped, having your mouth zipped up, feeling caged, dark colours and feeling very small in large rooms or spaces. These all reflect a sense that they are prevented from being themselves and how they look, act and feel. What they are asking for is the chance to get back to that feeling.
It is a huge pleasure to get to do this and every year we receive incredible entries, I have never doubted and have always championed the creativity and the contribution children and young people make. These entries are a significant contribution to what we do because of the question we ask and the incredible way they respond.
We will be announcing the winners very soon as well!
Brian

An interesting time…

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This has been an eventful few days for us and this week also sees the service take on something different. My first Blog entry was based on a paper on bullying and agency, submitted to the International Journal of Youth Studies and was at that time, awaiting publication, well Professor Sercombe and I have been informed the peer review process is complete and it will now be published. (Small round of applause) 
I am delighted that this paper will be published and hope that it starts some interesting and hopefully challenging debate around how we define bullying and how we respond. 
Critiquing definitions that have been used for years should challenge thinking on bullying. This is done to get practitioners focussing on what really matters; what they do when bullying is happening. Focussing on the impact behaviour has not trying to fit the people doing it into what are fairly rigid stereotypes.

This has coincided with the EUSARF Conference being held in Glasgow this week over three days. I shall be delivering a presentation titled – ‘Why a focus on agency for bullying makes for more effective outcomes’. This is a first for me and the service, getting to present and discuss our learning and our approach to anti-bullying to researchers, academics and practitioners.
While our focus always has and always will remain on providing practical solutions and resources to people that help them on a daily basis, it is good that we are now in a position to contribute to the debate at an international level.
It is the fact we focus on pragmatic solutions that need to work in practice that has enabled us to reframe and sharpen our thinking. While this is working at the level that matters most, we have learned a great deal and we should and can seek to influence thinking and approaches based on the success we have had in Scotland. I will be meeting colleagues in Dublin soon to share the learning and success we have had delivering the service here.
We have also launched our new cyberbullying booklet for children and young people and it seems all of the places who received this have opened their mail on the same day! We send every school and registered children’s service 2 copies and then they get in touch to ask for more – fair to say we can look forward to a few paper cuts over the next week.
Brian