Social media a ‘relentless’ menace
Mark Potter believes social media is training children to bully each other. Online communication loosens social conventions, making it easier for children to do what they wouldn’t in person, and frustrating schools’ ability to beat cyberbullying to the punch.
‘‘You can go online and see a video where a girl is being hit in the head by another girl and like it,’’ the principal of Wellington’s Berhampore School said.
‘‘New Zealand has the highest uptake of screen time in the western world for children so essentially it’s no surprise [cyberbullying rates are high].’’
It is estimated one in five Kiwi children are cyberbullied. The crossover between online and offline bullying is about 90 per cent, but research from Victoria University says students are less likely to report cyberbullying, and teachers are the last people they would report it to.
The consequences can be wide-reaching and tragic: Those bullied online are twice as likely to attempt suicide or self harm than their non-bullied peers.
While principals are split on whether cyberbullying is a distinct phenomenon or simply a new tool for tormentors, they agree it is difficult to combat. Potter called it ‘‘insidious’’ – others described it as ‘‘relentless’’ and ‘‘unforgiving’’ – and said it was hard to teach online behaviour when technology, and children’s relationships to it, was evolving so rapidly.
‘‘As adults populate certain areas of technology, [children] abandon it.’’
Keryn Tubbs, a law and commerce student in Wellington, started developing an anti-cyberbullying app and web tool in high school. Two years on, ICON (In Case of Online Negativity) will launch this month with the aid of Sticks’n’Stones, a student-led anti-cyberbullying programme in Central Otago.
Tubbs said ICON is ‘‘like a dictionary’’, matching people’s experiences with cyberbullying to services and solutions. ‘‘Now, [I’m] turning 20, it’s a different world to when I was 16.
‘‘I grew up in Alexandra and it was your typical small town with not a lot of resources so, for me, it was important for this app to be available wherever you are.
‘‘[I’m] not saying there’s nothing out there to help with cyberbullying, but there’s not just one place to go to connect all those things.’’
Online safety organisation Netsafe responds to about 60 complaints of cyberbullying each month and is the go-to authority on digital citizenship for nearly 80 per cent of school principals.
However, the Harmful Digital Communications Act, which seven people have been jailed under since 2015, is the only legal avenue for addressing cyberbullying. Chief executive Martin Cocker said Netsafe had no enforcement capabilities – and did not need any. ‘‘You’re much better off to have a model that’s built around relationships rather than enforcement.’’
Cocker said building a culture within schools where students ‘‘speak out against the behaviour of other young people does work, but it’s not fail safe’’.
Like some in the Ministry of Education’s Bullying Prevention Advisory Group (BPAG), he questioned whether investing in wellbeing programmes was the best solution to our concerning bullying rates.
‘‘People are too keen to put bullying and harassment into a broader wellbeing basket and say ‘if you treat people nicely then everything will go away’.’’
Cybersafety expert John Parsons said schools and policy makers were doing everything right. Cyberbullying rates were immovable because prevention efforts had to ‘‘come from the living room’’.
He said the ease and impact of cyberbullying arose from the distance it created between people, and habits modelled at home. Dads who don’t look up from their phones while talking shouldn’t be surprised if their kids avoid eye contact, and gossiping mums can’t blame Facebook for cyberbullying.
‘‘When you take these complaints about the younger generation, these are the same issues adults have, but we have drawn a line and said this is because they are young,’’ Parsons said. ‘‘We have attached to much blame to the technology itself. We have failed to look at the contributing factors.’’
District courts can order the removal of harmful online content, sentence culprits to two years in prison, or enforce penalties up to $50,000 for breaches of the Harmful Digital Communications Act (2015). Harm is defined in the Act as causing ‘‘serious emotional distress’’.