Social media is now part of everyday life; however cyberbullying seems to be an increasing trend
Katherine Jenkins has been a high profile victim of cyberbullying. Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/branestawm/
Social media is part of our lives whether we like it or not. However with our personal lives online potentially for all to see, it can leave us vulnerable to cyberbullying and abuse.
According to recent Welsh Government guidance, cyberbullying can be defined as the use of technology, in particular mobile phones and the internet, to deliberately upset someone else. One high profile victim of cyberbullying has been Welsh star Katherine Jenkins, who has been harassed for over a year on Twitter.
Katherine recently revealed a false Twitter account has been set up in her name, by an apparent obsessed fan. Her ordeal culminated with the bully sending Katherine a probing, personal question via Twitter to a live television show, sparking a public response from the star, who branded the bully pathetic. She hit back at the bully, saying, “You have no right to harass me as you’ve done over the past year with comments like ’bring out the dead daddy story again’.”
While celebrities, including Katherine, use social media to communicate with their fans, it seems some use it as an excuse to attack. Social networking is providing another platform for bullying, with an apparent one in 13 young people being victims of persistent cyberbullying. With further research showing over a third of young people have been victims of some form of cyberbullying, online attacks are becoming more frequent.
The pressures of social media
A recent Barnardo’s report into bullying discovered that social media can serve as a trigger point for bullying, but can also aggravate the problem by spreading the problem further.
It found that young girls feel they have no choice but to be on social networks, with one Welsh school girl saying they cannot make friends without it. One young girl said, “It’s not an option not to be on Facebook at our age.”
Comments by the young people in the report highlighted how bullies post abusive material and rumours through Facebook, ensuring it spreads to as many people as possible, emphasising not only how social media can exacerbate a situation, but how intimidating being bullied online can become.
Preventative measures
In supporting anti-bullying, a Welsh initiative, Respect Wales: The Welsh Anti-Bullying network seeks to build links with anti-bullying networks to provide information across the country. They aim to provide support for young people and reduce bullying incidents.
John Hicks, who is part of the Welsh Assembly Government’s Pupil Engagement Team, believes cyberbullying is a way of facilitating bullying. For example, not only would a victim be cyberbullied, they would be suffering homophobic bullying also, and it needs to be dealt with through education.
The government puts out information for schools on how to spot, and what to do about bullying, John explains, “Our approach is, by in large, a preventative approach. By using the guidance we would hope that schools are savvy enough to spot bullying.”
Dealing with Cyberbullying
As for victims of bullying, the Welsh Government offers support at school level. John says, “The Welsh government over the last couple of years has put a lot of money into a national school based counselling service, essentially developing a service to help young people with whatever is affecting them at the time.”
However, dealing with the root cause of the problem are organisations such as Beatbullying Wales, which seeks to eradicate and support victims of bullying. They work with young people to empower them and produce anti-bullying programmes in schools.
Beatbullying has developed a scheme, CyberMentors, to give victims of bullying assistance and advice. CyberMentors are young people who are trained by Beatbullying on how to help their peers.
Sherry Adami of Beatbullying Wales explains, “It harnesses the power of social networking. We go into schools and train young people from age 11 up to 25. They are there at key times to help and support their peers and people who are being bullied or experiencing wellbeing issues.”
Changing behaviour
“There is a solution; it’s about having an integrated approach,” Sherry believes, “we know children are using social networking sites. We have seven-year-olds on Facebook and we need to acknowledge that. Facebook needs to create an area that’s appropriate for seven-year-olds instead of pretending they’re not there.”
Sherry insists that social networking sites don’t do enough to protect users from cyberbullying. She believes there is a lack of education regarding the sites, and many young people do not know how to deal with offensive material appearing online.
“We welcome some of their advancements in terms of acknowledging that this is happening,” she says. “There are report buttons and safety advice, but there needs to be more. We need to tackle it at the root of the problem. It’s about better signposting, it’s about engaging with users and letting them know that anti-social behaviour online is unacceptable.”