Cyberbullying – a clearer focus

January 26, 2016 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

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

What do we mean by bullying?

January 7, 2015 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

This blog summarises and improves on a couple of the speeches I have made on this issue lately – I hope you find it useful.

What do we mean by bullying?

There have been many different definitions and theories about what constitutes bullying, but it’s not helpful to define bullying purely in terms of behaviour, bullying is both behaviour and impact.

Bullying is not about just any kind of injury, nor just any negative impact. It involves a particular kind of harm. It is aimed at engendering a kind of helplessness, an inability to act, to do anything. It is an assault on a person’s agency (Sercombe and Donnelly 2012)

Bullying is a mixture of behaviours and impacts which can impact on a person’s capacity to feel in control of themselves. This is what we term as their sense of ‘agency’. Bullying takes place in the context of relationships; it is behaviour that can make people feel hurt, threatened, frightened and left out.

This behaviour can include:

• Being called names, teased, put down or threatened

• Being hit, tripped, pushed or kicked

• Having belongings taken or damaged

• Being ignored, left out or having rumours spread about you

• Receiving abusive messages on social media or phone

• Behaviour which makes people feel like they are not in control of themselves

• Being targeted because of who you are or who you are perceived to be

This behaviour can harm people physically or emotionally and, although the actual behaviour may not be repeated, the threat may be sustained over time, typically by actions: looks, messages, confrontations, physical interventions, or the fear of these. Bullying is both behaviour and impact.

Online bullying

Online bullying, or Cyberbullying, is often the same type of behaviour but it takes place online, usually on social networking sites. A person can be called names, threatened or have rumours spread about them and this can (like other behaviors) happen in person and can happen online.

Advances in technology are simply providing an alternative means of reaching people – where malicious messages were once written on school books or toilet walls, they can now be sent via social media sites on mobile devices making their reach greater, more immediate and much harder to remove or erase.

Some online behaviour is illegal. Children and young people need to be made aware of the far-reaching consequences of posting inappropriate or harmful content on forums, websites, social networking platforms, etc. If a child or young person is being treated or threatened in a sexual way or being pressured into doing something that they don’t want to do, this is not bullying. There are laws to protect children from this very serious type of behaviour.

Persistence and Intent

Bullying is not defined by persistence or intent. This is relevant because if you were to look up definitions online and in peer reviewed articles, the vast majority of these will refer to bullying as persistent and deliberate behaviour.

We would argue that these are unhelpful criteria to apply to all situations. So much time can be lost trying to apply a range of situational factors, many of which are in fact subjective. Many incidents of bullying will include deliberate and repeated behaviour but these are not in our view, essential criteria to define bullying.

Making these an essential criteria to be met excludes a significant amount of incidents of bullying that are not deliberate or necessarily repetitive. We know from our work with children and young people , that bullying takes many forms and something need only happen once to have a severe impact.

Let’s look at intent– if you tell me bullying must be deliberate and then accuse me of bullying, what is my first response? – That I didn’t mean it. Intent is difficult to prove. It can tie situation up in knots and the focus on responding to what someone did and the impact it had is lost.

Schools can waste a lot of time trying to prove intent –I have been involved in examples when intent is denied the adults are stumped and do not know how to proceed. We must look at what someone actually did and the impact it had. If it wasn’t deliberate then they may be in a position to apologise or make amends sooner – of it was it may merit a more serious response.

Bullying is usually deliberate but not always – sometime children use language they hear at home and have no idea of how offensive or inappropriate it is. We should not get caught up in using this as qualifying criteria though – it’s too easily re-framed

Let us now consider persistence– that the behaviour must be repeated before it can be considered bullying – again this is something we do not agree with and neither do most young people we have spoken to. Persistence is difficult to define and also, is it more than once? twice? daily? weekly? Who defines when it’s persistent enough to intervene? Me, the person it is happening to or the intervening adult? Something need only happen once and the impact can be severe; a child may not get changed for PE after one incident were they were picked on, humiliated or threatened.

Is being humiliated by having your shorts pulled down in front of a class with 15 people laughing and pointing, some possibly taking a picture, bullying? Of course it is, is it repetitive? It doesn’t matter, we focus on the behaviour and the impact it had.

The fear of repetition can be sustained through looks or perhaps threats or just the fear of it happening again.

What you do about bullying is actually more important than how you define it.

We respond by asking;

What was the behaviour?

What impact did it have?

What do I need to do about it?

Every situation is unique. You might over hear some name calling in the corridor and discover this is chat between to close friends who are ‘winding’ each other up; it is not part of any power or dominance game.

What was the behaviour? Name calling

What impact did it have? None – made them laugh

What do I need to do about it? Nothing – perhaps remind them about language or being overheard

You may hear the same name calling ten feet further on but the person on the receiving end is upset and embarrassed in front of her peers.

What was the behaviour? Name calling

What impact did it have? Left someone embarrassed and fearful – who ran off

What do I need to do about it? Help this person get back into her routine, listen to how she feels and decide on next steps – you will need to challenge the people who called her names and look at possible consequences too

This does not mean we only focus on the impact behaviour has – this means that if someone shouts a homophobic or racist slur at someone and it bounces off them and they don’t care –this does not mean you do not need to do anything about the language used and the attempt to bully. Just because a person is not affected does not mean the behaviour they experienced should be ignored.

Just as not all attempts to bully are successful, people can feel bullied but not be – it is possible some people over react –you still need to deal with their reaction and their feelings but you might not need to do much about the behaviour the experienced – it could have been a harmless comment not aimed at them but they have assumed it was and got into a terrible state over it.

Focussing our response

Bullying and Agency

So when we look at impact – things like feeling hurt, angry, scared, frightened, that knot in your stomach- what is happening there? What do these reactions tell us?

Young people have reflected to us over the years in a range of ways that they feel unable to speak out and feel trapped when bullied – they draw pictures of themselves in large rooms feeling caged and so on. This learning helped us articulate the notion that bullying actually takes something away from people.

All of these feelings which are regularly articulated reflect a loss of being in-charge of yourself, of being capable of taking effective action, of making choices and of being an effective actor or agent in your own life.

When we use our agency, we have a degree of choice over what we do and how we respond within structures like families, communities and schools.

Young people get this notion – as it can be a bit if a head scratcher the first time you hear it – though when you explain a ‘typical day’ of meeting friends, going to school, laughing, joining in and knowing what is happening and how you’ll respond most children and young people recognise this day. Bullied children don’t have the same kind of day. Someone else is in charge of how they feel, where they go even or how they will participate in certain things, if they get on the bus or eat alone. They cannot exercise the same choice nor have the same autonomy as when they were not being bullied.

We learn from our past experiences, from imagining what we would do in future similar situations and what is happening to us now – these elements combine and enable us to make choices and act – this is agency.

Managing change and responding to challenges requires hope, a belief you can handle things – and agency and these underpin resilience.

If we re-visit the quote –

– we can see bullying is not even the establishment of dominance. The person bullying is not satisfied with dominance. Bullying can involve the attempt to deny another any settled place, even a subordinate one. It goes beyond subjection. In bullying, the goal is abjection

What does this mean for how we respond?

Considering that bullying is both different types of behaviour and a particular impact this should re-focusses our understanding of the dynamic – this can re-define an approach to bullying in a way that helps practitioners’ responds to feelings and actions. This is always more effective than checking off criteria and having uniform sanction based responses based on our view of the person who is doing it.

If we can accept that bullying takes something away from people, that they can no longer take effective action our response must focus on helping get that back.

This is the real shift in anti-bullying practice – how do I help someone get back a feeling of being in control of themselves and in a place to take effective action to feel safe and get on with their day?

Things like moving desks or even just excluding people won’t on their own help restore agency – young people must be included in what will happen next and given the chance to steer what direction it goes in. They need to be asked what they would like to happen and we need to take that seriously.

This is not always easy but it must remain our goal with every intervention – to help young people get back to a place where they are in control and can take effective action.

In reality – what does that look like? What does it sound like? You will need to ask questions like

What would you like to happen?

What do you think will happen if I tell his or her parents?

What will happen if I tell your teacher?

What are you worried about?

Be prepared for them to say

Don’t tell my dad – you will out me to him and I’m not ready for that

I just want you to know what is happening and if I need you I will come and get you

If you talk to his dad he will get a doing/beating and it’ll get worse

So you explore what options they do have and sometimes that means pointing out that you need to do something as not doing anything is dangerous

Open conversations like these promote communication – this promotes positive relationships and they promote and role model problem solving behaviours –these relationships can become stronger and children become more resilient to what is happening because of this strong purposeful relationship – even with just one person.

The process of listening and consciously trying to get back agency – a sense of being on control – won’t always lead to a perfect outcome but it will help the person being bullied

Labelling

Bullying is not defined by the type of person who did it either

Care needs to be taken because labelling is not without its risks, labelling a child or young person on the basis of bullying behaviour can result in a confirmed identity as a ‘bully’ or ‘victim’ resulting in ongoing behaviour patterns based on this identity.

This is not to dilute behaviour but is to keep the focus of the adult’s responses on the behaviour that is problematic, rather than the assigning characteristics to those involved. This is a solution focussed approach that is designed to help people change the way they behave, rather than attempt to change who they are. We help people change by telling them the behaviour that is unacceptable, being clear that what they are doing is bullying and that it needs to stop.

It is a fundamental part of behaviour management that we tell people what the behaviour was they did, why it is not acceptable and help them figure out what to do the next time they feel that way.

All of this promotes respectful relationships, this approach builds a young person’s capacity to respond more effectively, when we are helping young people learn to negotiate tricky relationships and when we involve them in finding solutions and repairing those that can be fixed, we help them to become more resilient.

Brian Donnelly

Bullying in Scotland 2014 Reserch Survey Findings

November 17, 2014 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

I have posted a brief summary of the results of a survey carried out earlier this year – I will be posting a lengthier blog in the not too distant future discussing the findings in greater depth but for now at least – here is a quick snapshot of what children and young people told us

The research

The primary aim of this piece of research was to obtain a picture of how children and young people are experiencing bullying in Scotland in 2014.

This research was designed to:

· Identify the types of bullying that is experienced by children and young people.

· Give a clear picture of where bullying happens and where online and offline/face to face experiences differ or crossover.

· Identify from children and young people’s own experience what they feel works and what is less helpful.

· Identify where children and young people go online and what technology they use to get there.

An online questionnaire was designed and tested and distributed to all schools in Scotland in May and June 2014. In total, there were 8310 responses, of which 7839 were useable. Responses came from all over Scotland with all 32 Local Authorities represented. Respondents were aged between 8 and 19 years old. Sixty five per cent were 12 – 14 years old.

This was an open survey and the findings presented here represent only the views of the children who took part.

Three focus groups took place with 45 young people to get a more detailed insight into children and young people’s experiences of bullying – in particular, their thoughts on what happens online and in person, where these two are different and where they crossover.

Key findings

The key findings from the survey are as follows:

30% of children and young people surveyed reported that they have experienced some sort of bullying behaviour between the start of school in August 2013 and June 2014. Of this 30%:

§ 49% experienced bullying in person

§ 41% experienced bullying both in person and online

§ 10% experienced bullying online only.

A number of children and young people had more than one experience of bullying. Children and young people surveyed reflected 12,003 experiences of bullying behaviours. Of these experiences: –

§ 60% took place in person

§ 21% took place both in person and online

§ 19% took place online only

92% of children and young people who were bullied knew the person bullying them (91% online and 92% offline). Anonymity therefore may not be what is driving bullying online.

· Behaviours such as name calling, hurtful comments and spreading rumours that make people feel angry, sad and upset happen both face to face and online.

· Children and Young people employ a range of strategies to cope with bullying; some are more successful than others.

§ Almost half (48%) of children and young people who are bullied tell their parents.

§ Friends and teachers are also providing support to a high number of children and young people who are bullied.

· The most successful anti-bullying interventions are embedded within a positive ethos and culture and don’t just focus on individual incidents.

Children and young people’s use of technology, especially mobile technology and social media, is woven into their everyday lives.
The majority of children and young people (81%) consider their online friends to be all or mostly the same friends they have in real life
Children and young people access internet content on mobile devices, such as phones and tablets, more than other devices such as PC’s or laptops.
Google, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook are the most popular websites and Apps used by children and young people when they go online.

Next Steps

We will further analyse the data we have collected and use it to help develop effective policy and practice around bullying. The data is likely to help us to address some questions more effectively including: –

· Given the relatively low proportion of exclusively online bullying, and the similarity of online and offline bullying behaviour, to what extent is a specific response to online bullying needed?

· What are the appropriate responses to gender specific differences in experiences of bullying?

· How can we help schools to further develop an anti-bullying ethos? And how can we continue to ensure children and young people are involved and included in this process?

· How can we continue to support parents to respond when their children tell them about being bullied?

· How can schools further help children and young people learn from other pupils about the strategies that they have found useful?

Do we really all have to be friends?

June 26, 2014 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

The line that gave respectme its name has served us very well over the years and made for a very popular poster and video campaign – ‘You don’t have to like me, agree with me or play with me… but you do have to respect me’. The thinking behind this was the need for a way to describe how we wanted to help children and young people shape the terms for relationships and interactions with peers.

While this sounded quite catchy and lends itself well to a campaign – I always wanted to it have substance – and that is why we always follow this up by exploring what does this statement actually mean or what does it actually feel or look like for children and young people?

It is a nice demand to make of people I know but again, what does it mean. For the most part – it means simply leaving someone alone – you don’t need to connect with them, learn about them, understand them or become friends with them – just let them be.

The example I tend to use when discussing this, relates to an experience I had when my second oldest was at nursery. As reputations were being built and lost around the sandpit I heard the teacher tell the boys and girls who were playing and getting out of hand that ‘they should all be friends and play nicely’. This was of course said with warmth and with the best of intentions but at the time it really got me thinking – ‘’Do they all haveto be friends?’ how realistic an expectation is this?

Now, if a bunch of 4 year olds cannot behave around the sandpit we need to intervene and let them know how they should behave but do they all need to be friends? No – should they be expected to play near each other in a civilised way? Yes – perhaps a better response is along the lines of ‘if you are all going to play here together you need to be nicer to each other, no grabbing or shouting and you take turns – that’s one of the rules here’.

That is an easier boundary to set and easier to role model, if you tell them they need to be friends you are setting up an unrealistic expectation that they can’t possible manage – friends with everyone in your class? Are we as adults expected to be friends with everyone we work with? Do we even like everyone we are related to at times? Of course not.

I know for some this is not a huge issue but friendship is one of the first currencies children have to withhold or bargain with – it is a very powerful tool in early years and as such I think we can frame it more effectively. I would rather see a group of P1’s who can get along on different tasks, are respectful of each other and make friends on their terms. This also lets us talk about what it means to be a ‘good friend’ and help them understand that there will always be a wide group of people around them throughout school, some you’ll be friends with. Some you’ll know and say hello to and some you won’t get on with or agree with.

The skills needed to understand and negotiate this will serve them well in life not just school. Anti-bullying agencies get a bit of stick at times because the impression they give is that all they want is for everyone to be nice to each other and in fact this is unrealistic – I think it’s no bad thing to want everyone to be nicer but I agree that it’s not realistic.

What I do believe is that we should be asking children to respect their peers and that can mean a whole range of things. It can include talking and listening to someone and perhaps becoming friends, or it can mean fixing what was once a friendship or it can mean learning to be quiet and not shouting at or about someone you don’t like. I think friendships are vitally important to our children and young people – they rely on them, value them and as they get older, they turn to them for support and comfort – all this message and these campaigns seek to do is to help frame an understanding of what it really means to be friends.

Learning that it is okay not to like someone, that it’s okay not to agree with them is important – it’s what you do that matters. Not being friends does not have to mean that you are enemies. That is a message I have seen young people benefit from exploring on many occasions.

If you think about it there must be a few people in your life you don’t like, you don’t and never will agree with – you don’t hound and abuse them at every opportunity – you may have learned the hard way that a family Christmas dinner is not the time to get these feelings off your chest. It might be a colleague or your boss – most people learn to use their developed social skills that enables them to work effectively or not fall out with the whole family.

If you pick on, exclude or verbally abuse someone in person or online you don’t like or agree with then that’s the kind of bullying that will cause problems for everyone – if you are able to let them walk by, be online or in the corridor without you responding in some negative way – then everyone will be a lot happier.

We will always respond to bullying more effectively when we focus on what someone actually did and the impact it had. If they behaved in a way that is unacceptable then we focus on their actions and what they should be doing in future. This will be more effective than trying to fix or reframe a dynamic between two people that might not need ‘fixed’- nor will it ever fit into what we might think a ‘friendship’ is.

Brian

Online Bullying – Evidence to Education and Cutlure Committe

March 13, 2014 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

I have posted this briefing that was submitted ahead of the Education and Culture Committee Evidence Session on online bullying – it is an extended version of the briefing posted earlier on this blog

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, we have delivered training and materials across Europe and the UK as well as the US. We work with all adults who play a role in Children’s lives – parents to policy makers and we have trained teachers, social care staff, foster carers, football coaches, residential workers and many people in many other roles.

Online bullying 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 respectme developed resources, web content and a very popular training event on cyberbullying. We were able to refine and develop confidence with our core messages about online bullying and communicate these to our stakeholders through newer campaigns and resources aimed at adults and at children and young people. Our learning has now seen us bring the core messages on online bullying into our generic anti-bullying training.

These key messages include:

Bullying online is all 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 these 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 these sites work; how to make them safe and, most importantly, how to talk to their children about using them.

‘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. Our work and international research supports our assertion that you deal effectively with bullying that happened online as part of your whole approach to bullying. Carving it off as something different dilutes the reality of bullying experienced by children and young people – this is that they can experience bullying online and in person simultaneously.

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. This is not to say they do not know the difference but it is ads natural for your friendships to be evident in both your day to life online and where you live or go to school.

Children and young people use this to communicate –the purpose of using smart phones, consoles 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.

We have developed a two and a half hour training session for parents that we will be piloting across the Central belt later this year. This session will involve some ‘hands-on’ experience on social networking sites and leaning about safety settings and how they work.

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.

respectme undertook 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, instant messaging 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

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.

There is a real fear that anonymity is pushing this behaviour online – however there is little research to support this – what we do know is that believing they will no get caught and not fully understanding how permanent posting are online link to bullying and aggressive behaviours more than anonymity – many social network sites have a /name’ culture and most abusive behaviour online is not actually anonymous.

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.

This year will also see respectme undertake new research into children and young people’s experiences of bullying online and off. This research will enable us to help parents and professionals get a clear national picture of how young people are experiencing bullying in 2014. Crucially this will support and influence effective responses that recognise relationships play out on line and face to face more than ever.

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. 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.

A new publication for parents and carers will also be delivered this year and this will cover anti-bullying advice including online bullying.

Brian Donnelly

Director respectme

February 2014