Parents urged to step up action against online bullying

Parents need to take the lead in the battle against cyberbullying because the Government and internet companies are not doing enough, a leading researcher has claimed.

Dr Stephen Minton said there has been a mixed response to the problem from social media sites, with some making substantial improvements in relation to cyberbullying but others continuing to allow it and even affording relative anonymity to perpetrators.

In 2008, the lecturer in psychology of education at Trinity College, Dublin, was involved in a study with teenagers that found one in seven had been cyberbullied in the previous three months, while one in 11 had taken part in the behaviour.

He believes a Government decision not to introduce legislation in the area has been a missed opportunity, meaning parents need to be more involved in their child’s online activity.

“If the law is unclear, if the response of technology providers is intermittent, it really puts the onus on parents to smarten themselves up. There is no excuse to say, ‘oh this is all beyond me, we didn’t do computers in school’,” he said.

“My feeling is if you move into a new neighbourhood, you get to know the physical landscape, where you do and don’t want your child playing. Employ the same logic to the cyber landscape,” said Dr Minton.

He suggests parents get to know sites being used by their children and keep communication lines open with them. “It can be difficult in the teenage years but it’s a better safeguard than any legislation or technical device,” he said.

With widening public debate on the problem, particularly following deaths of teenagers by suicide being linked to online bullying, there was a prominent emphasis on the issue in new guidelines on bullying issued to schools last month by the Department of Education.

The previous TCD report will be outlined at a conference of the British Society for Paediatric and Adolescent Rheumatology in Dublin tomorrow. While the 2011-published study is based on Irish teenagers’ experiences five years ago, Dr Minton said the findings are reflected in more recent, although less extensive, research.

Most of the findings about cyberbullying related to 13- to 16-year-olds and he believes from this and other work that the problem is most associated with the early teenage years. Just like more traditional forms of bullying, cyberbullying behaviour appears to peak when children are aged around 13.