Sites face €2bn fine in EU bid to combat bullying

Social media companies such as Facebook, Ask.fm, and Twitter could face fines of up to €2bn if they fail to adhere to proposed EU rules on tackling cyberbullying.

A conference in Limerick, chaired by MEP Sean Kelly, also heard parents and schools must be taught how to protect children.

One of the keynote speakers, Pat Forde, an anti- bullying campaigner, said he was shocked to discover children as young as eight are using social media and are being bullied by vastly older strangers.

“We’re breeding kids into an online environment. I meet kids from as young as second and third class and they are very, very familiar with the concepts of having friends online and sending messages online,” he said.

“A lot of them tell me they are friends with people online they don’t know — they’ve seen people sending mean and hurtful messages online, so we really need to up our efforts on [preventing] this.”

Mr Forde said it should be part of the school syllabus.

This concern is highlighted by a survey of 217 parents by Nobullying.com: n74% said they did not know what websites their children used;

n62% did not know children could download over-18 applications on their mobile phones;

n92% of parents believe bullying starts in schools. So there is a strong link between physical bullying in school and after-school taunting in social networks.

Facebook user operations manager Cormac Keenan said: “Our [security] settings and policies are leading edge across the industry, but we are always looking at different ways to improve that.”

Sean Kelly MEP of Fine Gael, who has been appointed by the European Parliament to draft data protection regulations, said: “There will be very strict fines and curtailments, and if necessary, there would be a route into court if they [social media operators] were continuously not abiding by the rules.”

He added: “For the likes of Facebook, it [the fine] would be anything up to €2bn of their global income” or a certain percentage of its global income.

Mr Kelly said he hoped to finalise the proposed regulations before 2013 elections.

Last month, Lorraine Gallagher, from Donegal, whose daughters Erin, 13, and Shannon, 15, took their own lives after being bullied online, called for more to be done to protect children online.

Last year, Ciara Pugsley, 15, from Leitrim, took her life after receiving vicious taunts online.

Ask.fm, which has been the subject of much scrutiny, engaged a law firm to carry out an audit of its site and its safety features following the suicides of a number of teenage girls who were allegedly bullied on its website.