More than half of bullied children become depressed as adults, survey shows

Tags

'character-building', Bullying, Children, Cyberbullying, Depression, rite of passage, self-harm, suicidal

More than half of bullied children become depressed as adults, survey shows

55 per cent of children who have been bullied develop depression – with more than one in three becoming suicidal or self-harming as a result, according to a Europe-wide poll released today.

Yet despite the scale of suffering, one in three adults view bullying as a routine rite of passage, and 16 per cent describe it as “character-building”.

The shocking statistics have provoked calls for urgent action, with more than 100,000 people joining a campaign by the BeatBullying charity calling on the European Commission to introduce new laws to protect children from bullying and cyberbullying.

This comes after an inquest in May heard how a British teenager walked into the sea to drown after suffering cyberbullying over Facebook.

Callum Moody-Chapman, 17, from Cumbria, had been sent online threats by a former friend who was going out with his ex-girlfriend. The 17-year-old boy threatened to beat him, set fire to his home and encourage friends “to stamp on your head”. A verdict of suicide into the youngster’s death last December was recorded by the coroner, who cited the abusive messages as “by far the most significant aspect of this case”.

Attitudes need to change if such tragedies are to be prevented, according to campaigners.

Emma-Jane Cross, chief executive of BeatBullying, said: “Far too many European citizens still see bullying as ‘part of growing up’ and don’t take it seriously. This is pushing young people to the brink with some even resorting to harming themselves in order to cope.”

She added: “How many more children have to tragically lose their lives before these outdated perceptions change? Today more than 100,000 children, families, schools and charitable organisations are sending the European Commission a clear message that enough is enough. We urge them to listen.”

And Sarah Crown, editor of Mumsnet, one of the organisations backing the protest, commented: “These figures demonstrate once again why bullying ought not to be treated as ‘part and parcel’ of growing up. It’s a serious matter that can result in severe consequences for the victim.”

Little Mix, Amanda Holden, JLS singer Aston Merrygold, and reality TV star Jamie Laing from Made in Chelsea are among the names supporting the campaign. Leigh Anne of Little Mix said: “Myself and the girls have all experienced being bullied at some point in our life, when we see on Twitter that some of our fans are going through it now we find it so upsetting, and that’s the reason we feel so passionate about this campaign.”

And the effects on victims can be long-lasting. For childhood bullying can continue to damage mental and physical health for decades afterwards, causing higher rates of depression, ill health and unemployment in adult life, according to a study by researchers from Kings College London published earlier this year.

Cyber bullying: ‘He told me he was a footballer. I wasn’t to know I was a victim

Tags

Bullying, Children, Cyberbullying, Depression, mental health issues, risks, self-harm, sexual bullying, social networks, suicidal, young people

Cyber bullying: ‘He told me he was a footballer. I wasn’t to know I was a victim

When 15-year-old schoolgirl Lain Lerouge was contacted through Facebook by a professional footballer, she was not star-struck in the least. The player, who starred for a Football League club, was already friends on the social networking website with mutual acquaintances and she assumed that was how he came to first contact her. After their initial internet meeting, she and the 19-year-old player developed a closer relationship, chatting every day via their accounts and even talking regularly on the phone.

Lain, from Birmingham, said: “We just had normal, friendly chats. He would ask: what are you studying? Where are you from?”

Even when her online friend declared his love for her and asked her to send naked pictures of herself, she had no reason to doubt his identity. “I refused but then we’d talk on the phone. There was no question that it was a guy from London. His Facebook was flooded with girls, but I just thought he’s a footballer that’s totally normal. I know that I never met him and didn’t really know him, but if you chat to someone a lot you sort of feel like you know them. He seemed so normal,” she said.

The suspicion that she had been deceived came only when she received his telephone call and the number came up with Birmingham dialling code rather than a London one. This rang immediate alarm bells, and after some detective work Lain eventually traced the Facebook account to an older girl who went to the same school as she did.

It quickly emerged the student, who was in the year above, had set up a fake profile with pictures she had secretly downloaded from the account of a very real professional player. For her part, Lain said she simply felt embarrassed when she discovered she had been duped. “I never did get to the bottom of what motivated the hoax, but I was just so thankful that it wasn’t an old man.”

Lain’s bizarre experience is by no means an isolated case. Campaigners warn that growing numbers of children and teenagers are being bullied or even lured into sexual exchanges through bogus online profiles. Some young people are becoming depressed, even suicidal after falling victim, according to a survey by the charity Beatbullying.

Richard Piggin, deputy chief executive of Beatbullying, said: “Young people have told us about this alarming trend of fake profiles being used on social networking platforms to cyber bully and to engage in sexual bullying. The psychological impact of this form of bullying can be hugely distressing for many young people, with tragic and terrible consequences.” In a survey carried out by the anti-bullying charity, it discovered that nearly one-third of the 500 young people questioned say they have had a fake profile made about them on a social networking site. A further 65 per cent said they knew someone else who had been impersonated through a phoney account.

Beatbullying said the poll also showed that high numbers of the under-18s questioned had developed serious mental health issues after being targeted. Nearly one in 10 said they became depressed; 4 per cent developed an eating disorder; 7 per cent had suicidal feelings and the same number self-harmed. Another 13 per cent reported feeling afraid.

The extent of fake profiles on Facebook was revealed in the firm’s own financial records last August, which showed the site had 83 million fake profiles. But a Facebook spokesman stressed that the majority of these accounts had no malicious intent and were pages set up for businesses, pets or small children. He added that unlike with many other social networking sites, fake profiles can be reported directly to Facebook, which will then remove them. The spokesman stressed that the company acted swiftly on such reports. “Everyone on Facebook has access to simple tools to block and report people who make them uncomfortable.”

Mr Piggin added: “What social networking sites like Facebook need to do is work with organisations like us. They’re experts in technology, but they’re not experts in bullying and sexual bullying.”

Tony Neate, chief executive of the partly government-funded Get Safe Online, said: “Social networks are a great place for young people to talk to their friends, share photographs and play games – but children and parents must be educated on the risks that are around.”

Facebook Is The Worst Social Networking Site For Bullying, New Report Says

Tags

abuse, Bebo, Blackberry Messenger, Bullying, Cyberbullying, Depression, Facebook, harassment, internet, self-harm, social networking sites, Teens, trolling, Whatsapp, young people

Facebook Is The Worst Social Networking Site For Bullying, New Report Says

Facebook is the worst social networking site for internet trolling, and bullying is now more prevalent online than anywhere else, a study has suggested.

Some 87% of teenagers who reported cyber abuse said they were targeted on Mark Zuckerberg’s site, while around one-fifth of youngsters were picked on by Twitter trolls, the report showed.

Those most frequently victimised were 19-year-old boys.

According to the report, 49% of those targeted by bullies were victimised off-line, while 65% of teenagers were subjected to abuse in cyberspace.

Only 37% of those who had experienced trolling ever reported it to the social network where it took place, the report found.

Emma-Jane Cross, CEO and founder of the charity BeatBullying, said many young people were suffering in silence.

“Bullying both on and off-line continues to be a serious problem for a huge number of teenagers and we cannot ignore its often devastating and tragic effects,” she said.

“We work with hundreds of young people being cyber-bullied or trolled so badly that it can lead to depression, truancy, self-harm, or even force them to contemplate or attempt suicide.”

The study, for internet site knowthenet.org.uk, found a number of social networking sites had become “popular forums” for trolls.

Some 13% of the 13 to 19-year-olds consulted claimed they were targeted on BlackBerry Messenger, 8% said they were picked on by trolls on Bebo and 4% said they were victimised on Whatsapp.

Fewer than one in five (17%) teens said their first reaction would be to tell a parent and only 1% of those surveyed said their initial response would be to inform a teacher.

Around 34% of those who were picked on by trolls said their experiences lasted more than a month.

Knowthenet, which released the study, has now launched a “trolling hub” offering advice on how to deal with online bullying.

Opinium Research consulted more than 2,000 teenagers for the study.

A Facebook spokesman said: “There is no place for harassment on Facebook, but unfortunately a small minority of malicious individuals exist online, just as they do offline.

“We have a real name policy and provide people with simple tools to block people or report content which they find threatening so that we can remove it quickly.”

Links to report concerning behaviour on Facebook exist on every page of the site meaning users can report any piece of content.

Children are ‘upset’ by online violence, study finds

Tags

abuse, behaviour, Children, Cyberbullying, family, internet, sexting, social media, social networks, violence, young people

Children are ‘upset’ by online violence, study finds

Children are as upset by violent videos on YouTube that feature animal cruelty or beheadings and by insensitive Facebook messages from divorced parents as they are by online bullying and pornography, according to the biggest survey of young British people and their internet use.

The research will be unveiled by the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) on Tuesday – the 10th annual Safer Internet Day – when a charter of rights and responsibilities for children online will also be launched. The findings suggest that government policy, spearheaded by David Cameron, to block sexual content and pornography through parental controls and filters via internet service providers only goes part of the way to securing the online safety of children.

The survey, conducted for the council by academics, asked 24,000 children 25 questions about internet use, including “have you ever seen anything online that has upset you?” Hundreds of schools around Britain were enlisted to help canvass the children, who were aged up to 16.

Andy Phippen, professor of social responsibility at Plymouth University, who helped to devise the report, said: “Upset is caused by a broad range of issues, very varied, and not all sexual content.” One memorable answer from a primary school child who was asked what most upset him was “when my Dad told me on Facebook he didn’t want to see me any more”.

The report, Have Your Say, is consistent with research Phippen was already carrying out. The examples he heard included: a video of a zebra being killed, “someone swearing at me”, “a picture of my baby brother, who I don’t live with any more”, and a picture of a cat that “looked like my pet that had to be put down”.

Phippen said: “There is no silver bullet to crack child safety online. Government’s obsession with filtering is OK, but too narrow.”

Sonia Livingstone, professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics, told the Oxford Media Convention last month that LSE research, which asked 8,000 children aged nine to 16 about the disturbing things they had seen on the internet, supported this picture. She added: “There is a lot of attention given to pornography and bullying on social media, but they also mentioned beheadings, flaying, cruelty to animals.”

Professor Phippen agreed: “Any channel used for communication is potentially a channel for upsetting content, but certainly YouTube is the most prevalent as far as video content is concerned.”

Livingstone said that the issue of online bullying was not covered by efforts to filter out inappropriate content. “Filtering is only about content on established websites”, while filtering and blocking controls could be very clunky to use and problematic.

However, Have Your Say also finds many positive aspects to the internet. The survey shows that what under-11s do most is play games on sites such as Moshi Monsters, followed by schoolwork and keeping in touch with friends. For older children, social networking takes over from playing games.

“I think, in this age group, violent images and upset from abusive nasty comments from their peers are the concerns. It is spoken about as so and so is so mean to me. Cyber bullying – they don’t use that term,” said Phippen. Evidence from the children of being groomed or facing predatory behaviour online is also scanty.

Accessing pornography online, the main concern of parents responding to a government consultation last autumn, did not feature highly in the teenagers’ responses. But there is a growing problem of “sexting” messages in school, when pupils share personal sexual content via smartphones and tablets. Phippen said one answer was better education. “You come back to media literacy. About understanding how to conduct yourself online and what the impact can be of behaviour, when you don’t see the impact of your behaviour, on the victim in front of you.”

The growing problem of cyber-bullying

Tags

abuse, Children, Cyberbullying, parents, school, social media, suicide, Teens

The growing problem of cyber-bullying

Although it’s been around for as long as I can remember, I appreciate that for most adults cyber-bullying is quite a new phenomenon. And I don’t quite think they’ve yet grasped how to treat it. Unlike other forms of bullying, its effects often aren’t seen until it gets completely out of hand, and sometimes when it is too late.

According to the cyber bullying charity the Cybersmile Foundation, every 20 minutes a child between 10 to 19 years of age attempts to commit suicide in England and Wales. While one in three children in the UK suffers from cyber-bullying.

However, apart from the occasional scandalous news story such as the recent suicide of Canadian teenager Amanda Todd, most of it is never brought to light. So what’s really going on?

In my experience, most cases of cyber-bullying incidents aren’t, thankfully, as bad as Amanda Todd’s story. They usually comprise of arguments on Facebook that turn into popularity contests. Someone will spark off the conflict with a claim or rude post on the other person’s wall or photo and it will lead to a string of abusive and sarcastic messages. The rules of the battle are to remain nonchalant throughout and the winner is decided by whose comments received the most “likes”.

It then becomes almost a spectacle with everyone watching the fight unfold and messaging each other on who they think is faring the best. The bravest friends stick up for their comrade with their own comments and those less willing to get involved will simply join the mass of likes. This goes on until the receiver or the poster of the original message has enough sense to delete it and the fight continues in private.

Unfortunately, not all cases are so harmless and some can lead to serious emotional damage. A friend of a friend was a recent target when girls in her year created a Blackberry messenger group about her. It was comprised of over 20 people messaging each other about how they should kill the “slag”, supposedly because she was going out with an older boy. They then added her to the conversation and she wasn’t seen at school for two weeks. A close friend of mine was also a recent victim of abusive texts after false accusations arose around her having cheated with somebody’s boyfriend. “I felt so isolated and exposed,” she told me, “There was nowhere I could turn where they couldn’t get to me”.

There are also instances of malicious public statuses, embarrassing pictures being sent round and abusive questions on sites such as Formspring, a medium on which anonymous questions can be posted to specific people. Teens hiding behind their anonymous identity can post extremely hurtful things, which they would never say in real-life, but which they feel are acceptable in cyber space. Those who don’t answer are often accused of being cowardly and as a result receive even more “hate”.

Over 80 per cent of children fear that cyber-bullying is getting worse. Due to the growth of social media, every move you make on sites such as Facebook and Twitter is watched and regulated. Just a slight slip such as an “uncool status” or adding somebody as a friend, who you supposedly don’t know well enough, leaves the perfect opportunity for bullies to strike.

Victims of cyber bullying are always told they should seek help from school but they can often be just as confused as the perpetrators themselves. Although it is the wrong thing to do, many teenagers believe that their only chance of survival in the social media jungle of bullying is to fight back with equally as harsh and hurtful comments. This just leads to more tension and leaves schools and authorities with no easy way of putting an end to it without being accused of showing favouritism to a particular side.

I spoke to the founder of the Cybersmile Foundation, Scott Freeman on what he recommends when he receives distressed phone calls from victims and parents. Many parents are extremely worried about whether their child is being cyber-bullied and often are not sure how to protect their children if they don’t even know if it’s going on.

They are told to look out for certain signs such as their child acting paranoid and protective about other people looking at their computer and not wanting to go to school. A big reason why children may not want to alert their parents to the problem is the fear that their privileges, such as having a Facebook account and surfing the web may be taken away. Parents must show that they are on their child’s side and want to help them not punish them.

Children who call the helpline are suggested to talk to either to their parents or a member of staff at school about it straight away. If given permission to do so Cybersmile will contact their parents to run them through what can be done. If the child feels uncomfortable with that they should talk to a close friend, the most important thing is not to suffer alone. Cybersmile also offers counselling for anyone who is really having trouble. Most children live in fear of being cyber-bullied and this shouldn’t go on.

The charity also raises awareness of the problem, they fear is growing, by giving talks in schools and universities. They are designed to shock students into thinking about what they do online and who they may be affecting. Cyber-bullying workshops are also on offer for parents and children in order to bridge the gap between both generations and work on ways to combat the problem.

Cybersmile is working on changing the harassment law which they feel is outdated because it does not include online bullying. They believe that the internet should be viewed as a public space in which people who are acting abusive should be punished by law. A petition calling for government action has already received over 1,000 signatures, in the hopes of helping to erase cyber bullying. The foundation is producing anti-cyber-bullying wristbands which will be available from the 5th November. The money raised will be used towards supporting their 24 helpline which can be contacted on 0845 6887277.

For more information about the Cybersmile Foundation visit www.cybersmile.org

One In Four Children Subjected To Cyberbullying, Study Finds

Tags

Cyberbullying

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/06/one-in-four-children-cyberbullying_n_1257916.html?ref=uk

Hundreds of thousands of young people are being subjected to cyberbullying, with many being victimised for a year or more, new research suggests.

A study published on Tuesday reveals the long term impact of this abuse, with youngsters reluctant to go to school, living in fear of their safety and even resorting to self-harming or attempting suicide.

The Beatbullying survey of 4,605 children and young people in the UK, found that just over one in four (28%) 11-16-year-olds say they have been the victim of cyberbullying.

Cyberbullying is the bullying of another person through technology, such as mobile phones or the internet.

In more than a quarter of cases, the individual concerned was continuously targeted, suggesting that one in 13 secondary school children have faced persistent cyberbullying, the report claims.

The latest Virtual Violence II study says that with around 4.38 million secondary-aged children in the UK, it means that around 350,222 children have been the victim of persistent cyberbullying.

Of those that said they had been persistently cyberbullied, 23% said it last for a year or more, with 40% reporting the abuse lasting for weeks or months.

The study, which was commissioned by Nominet Trust and backed by the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), reveals that the effects of cyberbullying are far-reaching.

A fifth of victims said that fear of bullies made them reluctant to go to school, while 19% said their confidence and dropped and 14% said they did not feel safe.

In addition, five per cent said they had resorted to self-harming and three percent admitted they had attempted suicide.

And it is not just young people that have been the victims of cyberbullying.

The study, published to mark Safer Internet Day, found that one in 10 teachers say they have faced cyberbullying.

Almost half of the 339 teachers questioned (48%) said they have heard or witnessed colleagues being harassed.

Nine in 10 (91%) of the teachers surveyed said this bullying was an isolated incident that had arisen out of something that happened in school.

But the study also claims that cyberbullying has left some teachers afraid for their safety, or that of their family, while others said they felt emotionally and mentally violated, or that their teaching had suffered as a result.

Beatbullying chief executive Emma-Jane Cross said: “Cyberbullying continues to be a dangerous problem for a significant number of young people and we must not ignore its complex and often devastating effects.

“We as a society need to take responsibility for both preventing such harmful and anti-social behaviour, and dealing effectively with incidents of virtual violence when they occur.

“An integrated approach where we see Government, schools, parents, internet service providers and charities like Beatbullying all working together to keep our must vulnerable safe.”

A second study of more than 1,300 teachers suggests that while the majority of school staff are confident that children are safe from internet harm at school, many are concerned that this is not the case at home.

Some 88% of the teachers questioned agreed or strongly agreed that their pupils know how to use the internet safely at school.

But only 58% thought that pupils had the skills and knowledge to use the internet safely at home.

The survey, commissioned by Vital, the Open University’s Professional Development programme for teachers, also found that 91% of secondary school teachers and 52% of those working in primaries reported that their pupils have experienced cyberbullying.