Playground taunts more damaging to teenagers than online bullying
CYBER bullying is not as damaging or widespread as playground taunts, and fears of an epidemic are based on a myth, according to new research.
An Oxford University survey of 110,000 English 15-year-olds found instances of online abuse that were not accompanied by face-to-face bullying were “vanishingly rare”.
The researchers said “alarmist” interventions by charities and pressure groups were fuelling unfounded public fear around the issue, and diverting attention from efforts to tackle the root causes of bullying.
The NSPCC said it had recorded an 88 per cent increase in calls about cyber bullying in the past five years.
But just one per cent of the teenagers in the study reported being regularly bullied online but not in person.
For those who did suffer online bullying, the emotional impact was less significant that the damage caused by face-to-face bullying, the research found. This contradicts the widely held opinion that cyber bullying is more harmful than traditional bullying because of the relative anonymity afforded to the perpetrators, the larger audiences and the permanence of posted messages.
“There is a vanishingly small percentage of people who are bullied only online,” said Dr Andrew Przybylski, who led the research. “It has crystallised in the public imagination, and it’s easy to get drawn into these fears, but just because it is new it does not mean it’s a new behaviour.”
The data indicated that about one quarter of participants (27 per cent) experienced face-to-face bullying only, while nearly a third regularly experiencing either form.
Across both forms, the most frequent form of abuse was basic namecalling and teasing, with 12 per cent reporting it, while nine per cent reported the spreading of false rumours.
In January, the Prime Minister announced more help for schools to tackle the culture. However, Dr Przbylski said efforts should go into combatting bullying itself, rather than specifically against online behaviour.
He said schools were relying on a “cottage industry” of private consultants coming in to lecture teachers on how to combat cyber bullying.
“Cyber bullying is best understood as a new avenue to victimise those already being bullied in traditional ways, rather than a way to pick new victims,” he said.
Prof Dieter Wolke, an expert in mental health and wellbeing at the University of Warwick, said: “Any intervention to reduce bullying and the adverse mental health effects caused by victimisation must include efforts to reduce traditional bullying.”
Claire Lilley, the NSPCC’S head of child safety online, said: ‘We know that cyber bullying can be particularly damaging because it doesn’t stop at the school gates. Bullying can be devastating for young people no matter what form it takes.”