Cyberbullying and e-safety: new approaches

‘I’d die without my BlackBerry’ said a girl in the Cybersurvey project. Last week her addiction to her phone was echoed by others who displayed ‘nomophobia’: the word coined to describe the fear of being without your trusty mobile. One fifth of young adults would rather starve for 24 hours than go without their mobile and one in ten even wake at night to check their phone. Almost half said looking at their phone was the first thing they did in the morning, according to a report from O2’s insurance arm.

This need to conduct life through the handset is a driving force for teenagers culminating in a peak at age 14-15 when cyberbullying is at its height. It can lead to lack of sleep and anxiety, depression and even tragically, suicide for a few who are severely victimised.

Greater potential for hurt

Cyberbullying, though originating with the same motivation as bullying in the real world has a greater impact. There is no doubt that for young people and adults alike, Cyberbullying is a gamechanger. It hurts people in new and deeper ways than traditional bullying and there is a relationship between the two types of bullying that is reinforcing and mutually sustaining. 

Smartphones have taken matters to a new dimension. Mobile phones with cameras had already produced a major change in cyberbullying behaviour when they became widespread a few years ago, but now we are moving on to a world of constant internet access, GPS location devices, Bluetooth and Apps which even allow companies to harvest personal information from a children’s game.

The recent tragic death of Amanda Todd in Canada with her YouTube video caused shock waves, while the loss of Clara Pugsley, young woman in Ireland in the same month, brings it nearer to home. A series of suicides have been linked to cyber homophobic bullying among boys. There is no doubt that the long term impacts for those who are victimised, mobbed and isolated can be devastating, but for many it is a way of life to which they have adapted and we see how resilient and competent many young people are as they micro manage their social lives, reputations and romantic relationships via their mobile handsets.

Challenges for educators
Smartphones, games consoles and tablets present new challenges for educators as a child can access the internet in the palm of his hand at any time of the day or night. If one family has set the filter on their child’s handset you can bet there is another that has not.  In the UK, providers offer cheap ‘all the data you can eat’ packages, allowing young people to stay connected 24/7.

This changing scene demanded that we consider how well we were educating young people to stay safe and what new steps might be needed. While there is extensive research on approaches to address traditional bullying, research on cyberbullying is merely a decade old. If we are to give advice that is future proof, relevant and which young people ‘own’, it seemed we should ask their views first and evaluate how well we are doing now.

Young people’s views
The Cybersurvey, an online questionnaire and series of workshops, was devised to hear from young people – to explore their experiences online and via mobiles, and to ask about the e-safety education they had received.

Developed in the Midlands with a strong youth participation approach, I sought advice from e-safety champions, local safeguarding boards, anti-bullying co-ordinators and young shadow safeguarding boards such as in Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council. The development phase took nine months as we trialled and tested the questions and discussed them with young people. Essex County Council then kindly piloted it further. The final online questionnaire was first used in 2009 and has been run every year since then often several times a year in different areas. It revealed peaks in cyberbullying at age 10-11 and 14-15; different patterns of behaviour experienced by boys and girls; some very vulnerable groups of young people who need extra support.

The survey also revealed that e-safety education is reaching an ever-wider range of young people who stated that although the quality of the e-safety education was good or quite good, and generally given at the right age, too few actually follow it. Age 14-15 are the age group least likely to follow the advice when compared to all other age groups. Only 26 per centalways follow it.

A series of workshops was undertaken to explore the data with young people and develop ideas for new ways to deliver e-safety advice and to prevent cyberbullying as well as improve how to respond if it occurs. Young people were unanimous in rejecting assemblies about e-safety, they preferred practical demonstration in small groups and workshops - information given in ‘bite size chunks’ and re-visited from time to time. A series of lesson plans and short activities was developed with the aim of instilling a sense of ownership among them. By asking them to pitch their ideas, Dragons’ Den style, the whole room was energised and several innovative suggestions were given. Drama, art, English, History. ICT and film are some of the curriculum areas in which this work can be embedded, while older pupils can be supported to train younger ones.

In a series of training events with teachers we looked at school procedures. At the heart of school policy there were some important messages. Firstly the schools’ Anti-Bullying Policy did not always interact successfully with their policy on ‘Acceptable Use of ICT’, or work seamlessly with Safeguarding and Child Protection policy. Some messages were commonly required in all of them while every member of staff needed to know what to do in case of a serious incident. Very often ICT managers were digitally skilled but lacked training in effective listening and mediation for example, while front line teachers had effective listening skills but might lack the digital skills to deal with a cyberbullying or threatening case. Many teachers could not identify a report abuse button. Few knew how to tell when a website was secure.

Good Practice
But some schools have excellent practice. In a recent report for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner on safeguarding in E
E primary schools, ‘You have Someone To Trust’ the author worked alongside a team from the NSPCC. In the best examples, schools displayed a seamless strategy in which every member of staff had responsibility for safeguarding. No concern was too small to be worth reporting. Communication was excellent involving teaching and support staff, external agencies, parents and pupils. The ethos and culture of the school was given wholehearted attention, while underscoring this were effective procedures and training. This could be seen as a blueprint for also addressing cyberbullying and e-safety. We need an integrated approach in which every aspect of safeguarding is working together rather than a raft of policies gathering dust on a shelf.

Urban Phenomenon
But in too many primary schools there is a tendency to think that cyberbullying does not affect their pupil community, especially in rural areas where some explained to the Cybersurvey that they saw ‘Cyberbullying as an urban phenomenon’. Teachers need to address it early with age appropriate materials and pre-empt the ‘scary threatening messages and chainletters’ received by the ten year olds on their mobiles, before they reach that stage.

Furthermore for young people, especially teens to take any notice of the advice, it needs to be relevant to their lives. The first question of many workshops is ‘What do you do online?’ Followed by ‘What risks might there be? And ‘How do/would you avoid harm?’ This route to exploring their story in which they feature as the key player makes it real to teenagers and together educator and pupils can enter a dialogue and an exploration of how to keep safe rather than handing down some rigid rules in a top down model. Short activities which reinforce the messages should be repeatedly tried along with some longer sessions in which ways to keep safe are explored and demonstrated. Looking to the future it is time for a new appraisal of how we deliver e-safety messages, and the content of the messages.

The model of e-safety education developed in this book, ‘Cyberbullying and e-safety: what educators and other professionals need to know’ is a 3 tier one. Universal education on e-safety and cyberbullying works for the majority. It is joined by a targeted level for people known to be vulnerable or to have difficulties understanding such as those with special needs or those in care. At the top of this triangle is intensive work with a few particularly needy students who may have reported complex or severe cyberbullying, they may be bullied in school, suffer a personal loss or have other personal difficulties which might lead to them searching online for intimacy or friendship or taking risks with people they do not know.

Youth Participation
This is a call for a youth participation approach rather than a top down model in which rules are given from on high and obedience is expected. The most creative sessions explore whether certain actions are ‘safe in some circumstances’ and what those circumstance could be. Alongside this concept of ‘ownership’ is ‘support’ for those for whom the universal level of advice and support is simply not sufficient. Finally, without evaluation we cannot know whether any approach is successful.

About the Author
Adrienne Katz is the author of Cyberbullying and e-safety: what educators need to know’ published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London and Philadelphia www.jkp.com. The Cybersurvey is run by Youthworks Consulting - www.youthworksconsulting.co.uk. ‘You have someone to trust’,  a report on safeguarding in primary schools by NSPCC and Youthworks for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner was published in September 2012.