Socialmedia: Like giving kids keys to a Lamborghini
Kyana Vergara’s family had no idea she was being cyberbullied. In the eyes of her sister Aundrea Denoon she was a happy little girl with a ‘‘heart of gold’’, who wanted to be a social worker, who loved shopping and shoes, wearing her Converse sneakers, and playing netball.
But after the 12-year-old Palmerston North Intermediate student died suddenly at her home on January 11 – a suspected suicide – her family found worrying social media postings directed at their child.
‘‘I just think it was typical bullying. The hurtful words that young kids say they don’t realise. You call them ugly, you call them fat and it does damage and they don’t realise that,’’ Aundrea says.
‘‘She had a lot of friends, so we never thought it was happening. She was always happy, she always had friends at the house. She didn’t look like somebody who was being bullied.’’
After finding the messages devastatingly too late, the family have spoken out about the dangers of online bullying.
Her sister has pointed out that, in the age of social media, children have no respite from the taunts of bullies.
How can parents protect their children from online bullying, before the barbs become to much to bear? And when is too young for children to be online?
Under eight ‘too young’
There’s been a disturbing drop in the age children are using social media platforms and restricted games over the last two years, cyber safety expert John Parsons says. Worryingly, a lot of it is being facilitated by parents.
‘‘I have now started to see 7 and 8 yearolds having profiles created for them by mumand dad.’’
But giving children social media accounts that young is not safe, Parsons says. It puts children in an environment where they don’t have the knowledge on how to communicate safely.
The legal age for most US-based social media platforms – like Facebook and Instagram – is 13, but there is nothing stopping a child or their parent entering a fake date of birth just to create a profile.
But parents should know if they are entering a fake date of birth, that can unwittingly open a can of worms, Parsons says.
‘‘I’ve seen boys and girls make themselves 40 when they’re 10. Then what happens is the platform thinks the user is 40 and the advertisements on the sites are for 40-year-old men, which is highly inconsistent with that child’s age.’’
‘At 13 they are still so vulnerable’
University of Otago psychology professor Elaine Reese says if she were the owner of a social media company, she would set an age limit of 16.
‘‘In terms of cognitive development it would feel a lot better – you think about the other things we allow kids to do at 16,’’ she says.
While most social media sites have the age limit of 13, many kids that age would still grapple with the social requirements, potentially leading to vulnerability to bullying behaviour.
‘‘At 13 they are still so vulnerable, it requires a great deal of sophistication having to think about not only how they’re presenting themselves, but what their message is and who is going to see it, and how those people are going to receive it – there are multiple layers.’’
She says even though kids have ‘theory of mind’ skills by age 13, it is hard to remember them in the moment. ‘‘When you dash off that impulsive thing you don’t think ‘What is grandma going to think?’ Or that it is there for everyone to see for a long time.’’
No down time
In many ways, cyber-bullying is no different from the old fashioned wedgies and ‘‘gimme your lunch money’’ style baby boomers grew up with, Victoria University professor Vanessa Green says.
The main difference is that kids can’t escape social media bullying.
‘‘It is 24/7, which is very different from bullying in other generations – at least it stopped at the school gate or by the time you get home.’’
She says the vast majority of children who are cyber-bullied are also victims of traditional bullying.
Bullies now just have another avenue to get at people.
Parents can help by teaching children how to use social media, just the same as if they were being given a car for their birthday, she says. ‘‘As much as we feel we might want to leave it up to the kids – it’s like giving the keys to your Lamborghini or Porsche to a 15 year old.
‘‘Our generation has created this incredible platform, and it’s our duty to ensure the next generation know how to handle it.’’
While there is rightly a lot of focus on making sure your own children aren’t being hurt online, parents should be equally aware that their children don’t inadvertently hurt someone else.
For example, her 7-year-old daughter was too young for social media, but she had already started chatting with her about how to make a comment on someone’s photo.
‘‘[We talk about] the danger of saying something that could be interpreted in the wrong way and talking about sarcasm, about how it’s really hard to get that across so you don’t hurt someone’s feelings.
One in four don’t tell
As in Kyana Vergara’s case, one of the most worrying things about social media bullying is when it’s hidden away.
It attacks children when they’re at home, in their bedrooms, whenever they look at their mobile phones.
Accent Learning education manager Deidre Vercauteren, who has been rolling out anti-bullying programme KIVA in schools, says the problem is most children need phones, and most phones are now smartphones with the ability to access the internet.
‘‘[Bullying] can start through text messaging, as soon as kids can write and they’ve got bullying characteristics that’s an avenue for them to use.’’
Vercauteren says she sympathises with Kyana’s parents deeply. ‘‘I was just sickened and horrified, it’s a parents worse nightmare,’’ she says.
But Kyana’s parents were not alone in having a child who had been secretly bullied.
In each school the programme has been to, they found about one in four students reported being bullied but not telling anyone. The important thing is to speak up. ‘‘If we can give kids the confidence to think it’s safe to tell someone – then things like this might not happen to apparently happy little 12 year olds.’’
‘Once you’re on you can’t turn back’
For one Wellington teen, a recent incident of cyber-bullying unfolded on Valentines Day this year.
It was Sunday about 10pm, and the 15-year-old was in her pyjamas, packing her bag for school the next day, when the messages started coming through.
At group of 18-year-old boys who she didn’t know had added her to a Facebook messenger chat, where she was the topic.
They’d taken screenshots of her Facebook page and were talking about whether they found her attractive, how promiscuous they presumed she might be – using repulsive allusions.
‘‘What annoyed me the most is that these dudes didn’t even know me and they felt perfectly fine ridiculing not only me, but my family from behind their screens.’’
In this case, she told her parents and went to bed. The next day they decided on a response together.
When it came to children accessing social media she says hold out as long as possible.
‘‘The legal age is 13, I think, but I reckon the later the better, once you’re on you can’t turn back.’’
Under eight-year-olds should ‘‘definitely not’’ be on social media, and 9-12 is still too young.
‘‘[Social media] is so unfiltered, anyone can talk to you, nothing is upfront, people will say anything when they think their identity is unknown and it’s hard to walk away.’’
The teenager says different social media had different risks.
For bullying, Ask.fm was the worst, followed by Facebook, Snapchat, and photo-sharing app Instagram.
But for creeps, Instagram was the worst, followed by Facebook, Ask.FM and then Snapchat.
Police perspective
Over the past few years, police have also recognised an increase in cyber-bullying, police community services manager inspector Paula Holt says.
She says the vast majority of Kiwis aged 15-24 were internet users [93 per cent] ‘‘and our young people seem to be getting younger using electronic devices’’.
Perhaps tellingly, police will soon be introducing a new code to specifically log incidences of bullying.
Holt says, while she couldn’t put an age limit on how young is too young for social media, even small children could be seen on iPads these days.
‘‘When you look at schools, technology is such a big part of their lives, so we can’t stop people from using technology, we need to work with them and their wider peer groups and whanau to be responsible users.’’
She encourages parents to have regular conversations with their kids about privacy and respect online, be calm and supportive if anything bad happens, and ‘block’ messages from bullies.
If a child is being cyber-bullied, take screenshots of the offensive messages, and if the bully is at the same school, organise a meeting with the school’s leadership.
Plus, under the new Harmful Digital Communications Act, it is an offence to send or publish threatening or offensive material and messages.
Since it was passed last year, 24 have been charged by police.
‘‘While the new charge offers another legal option for dealing with those who choose to use the internet to traumatise victims, it will only apply in the most serious of cases and police do not anticipate it will be frequently laid,’’ Holt says.
Create a strategy
About one-in-five high school age kids have experienced cyber-bullying, NetSafe executive director Martin Cocker says, but that figure hasn’t climbed over the last 10 years.
‘‘It’s just the specific platforms that change – it used to be text messaging, now it’s Facebook.’’
Parent’s don’t need to be ‘down’ with every single social media platform, as long as they are keeping an open dialogue with their child about what’s happening in their online lives.
Cocker suggests talking frequently and casually about what’s happening in their friend groups, which will often lead to a child opening up about what’s been happening to them.
Once they’ve opened up, the feeling of not knowing what to do, for both parents and kids, was common.
‘‘More than half of youth report when parents get involved, the bullying gets worse,’’ Cocker says.
Instead of waiting outside the school gates to grab a bully by the ear, calling the bully’s folks, or direct messaging the individual, the best thing parents can do is create a strategy, he says.
‘‘With your support and assurance, your children can ride out smaller online bullying episodes without intervention and they’ll be fine.’’