Digital dangers

THE advice we give our children on e-safety is completely out of date.

So says British-based Adrienne Katz, author of Cyberbullying and E-Safety and director of the Bullying Intervention Group, who believes current approaches do not protect youngster from the dangers of the digital highway.

The anti-bullying consultant’s comments are timely — in September, Leitrim 15-year-old Ciara Pugsley killed herself after being subjected to online bullying. Similar abuse drove Erin Gallagher, 13, from Donegal, to take her life in October.

Educators advise parents to keep the PC in the living room so they can keep an eye on what kids are doing. But such advice is out of sync with the reality of young people’s online lives. “If they can get online on the palm of their hand under their duvet, the advice is out of date. Some young people never disconnect. Many wake in the middle of the night wondering if anyone’s talking about them,” says Katz, who surveyed more than 9,000 children and teens about their experiences of — and opinions on — cyberbullying and e-safety.

The traditional top-down method of teaching e-safety — where educators teach teachers who pass on blanket, increasingly irrelevant rules to young people — needs to be up-ended, says Katz. She wants to make young people “our partners in a new voyage of discovery — together in a dialogue, rather than simply dropping a few rules onto them, which isn’t working”.

She acknowledges the conscientiousness of parents who put filters on their child’s mobile phone but warns that overly relying on technology to manage e-safety won’t adequately protect children.

“It’s up to every parent to have conversations with their child about how we behave to one another — it’s not enough to have a filter.”

We tell children to confide in an adult if they’re being cyber-bullied. But Katz’s research found 11% of cyberbullied mid-teens didn’t tell anyone – and the middle teens are when cyberbullying peaks.

“At this age, a lot of cyberbullying has to do with sexual jealousy or homophobia. If you’re a young person and rumours are being spread that you’re gay, you may fear telling a teacher or parent, in case they question whether you are gay. You may not be ready for that.”

Cyberspace has refined the bully’s tools. While the traditional schoolyard bully couldn’t generally follow you beyond the school gate, the cyber-bully can track you all the way to your bedroom. And anonymity gives greater power.

“If people are passing rumours around about you and you don’t know who’s doing it but it must be somebody who knows you well, you’re looking at everybody, thinking ‘is it you?’ You become distrustful of everyone. When bullies can reach you anywhere 24/7 and it’s anonymous, your adrenalin’s constantly up like a hunted animal.”

A little under half of the young people surveyed by Katz had experienced abusive or nasty behaviours on their phone or on the internet. But only 19% considered it cyber-bullying. “Most young people appeared to have developed coping methods — either shrugging it off or they had one true, real friend, which is the single most protective thing preventing young people from getting seriously depressed in bullying situations.”

But for the one in five who described the behaviour as cyber-bullying, things were tough — they were generally enduring repeated and multiple types of abuse.

Katz found gender plays a part in who cyberbullies and in how young people react to being cyberbullied, with girls more to the fore both as perpetrators and victims. Traditionally, girls’ bullying took the form of mean gossip, rumour spreading and talking behind someone’s back. “The tools that cyberbullying offers help further this type of rumour spreading. Girls take to the airwaves to tweet quick retorts of meanness to shore up power within a group or to put somebody outside the group.”

But the research also found boys are more reluctant to admit to being cyberbullied. If you’re male and want to keep a tough self-image, it’s a big step to admit you’re a victim.

We need to beef up our e-safety education, says Katz. It needs to be presented in short, bite-sized chunks and reinforced and repeated frequently. Don’t get a speaker into school for half a day and think you’ve covered things. Instead, explore with young people, in small groups, what their online lives are like. What are the risks they might run when doing this online activity? What can they do to keep themselves safe?

Get them researching these questions and have them come back for discussion. Could they now teach a younger child how to be safe doing this activity? “They need to own responsibility for their safety,” says Katz, who recommends appealing to young people’s idealism.

“Remind them they can choose to flock to support the person targeted by bullies. Bystanders outnumber bullies and victims – if we turn them around they can exert a pressure for good. When they don’t snigger or pass on the photo they were asked to share, they control the bullies.”

* Train in Katz’s approach to beating cyberbullying at Mayo Education Centre. Parents’ training session: 7pm on Dec 5; full-day of training for teachers on Dec 6. Booking: [e-mail] or phone [phone].

How parents can cope

* Understand young people will sometimes do risky things online. If your first reaction is anger, they may be reluctant to come to you again with a problem.

* Have a loving, non-judgmental approach, so the child feels free to come to you if something embarrassing or humiliating has happened to them.

* Parents must model good behaviour — never re-tweet or pass on nasty messages.

* Encourage young people to regularly clean their friends’ page and to only keep friends they actually know. This ensures their innermost thoughts, status and photos are seen only by those they’ve chosen as friends.

* Discuss with them what they can do if a conversation in a chat room becomes ugly – they can leave the chat room, they can block the sender but they should always save nasty messages as potential evidence.

* Facilitate your child having friendships across a range of social settings, such as by joining a sports club or dance class.

* Visit www.antibullyingireland.com; also the Anti-Bullying Centre website: www.abc.tcd.ie