Right: Social networking sites such as facebook provide useful tools for gregarious teenagers, but they also provide ammunition for cyberbullies.
.Arguments suggesting that Australia is not doing sufficient to prevent cyber bullying
1. Many children suffer at the hands of cyber bulliesCritics claim that one indication that Australia is not doing sufficient to address cyber-bullying is the extent of the problem. Cyber bullying is said to be a very widespread problem that afflicts more young people than is popularly recognised.
Professor Donna Cross of Edith Cowan University has recently completed a landmark study on cyber bullying, commissioned by the Federal Government.
Twenty-thousand Australian school children were surveyed using a combination of anonymous questionnaires and interviews. According to the survey conducted by Professor Cross, about 10 per cent of young people reported they were being cyber bullied.
Studies in the United States indicate that cyber bullying is a significant problem there also. According to the United States National Crime Prevention Center, over 40% of all teenagers with Internet access have reported being bullied online during the past year. According to another recent United States study, 58% of 4th through 8th graders reported having mean or cruel things said to them online. 53% said that they have said mean or hurtful things to others while online. 42% of those studied said that they had been 'bullied online'.
Young people in Australia are increasingly using technology, with Australians known as early adopters and young people being labelled 'the digital generation'. In the United Kingdom, 75% of 7- to 16-year-olds have used the Internet with young people reporting that they integrate on- and off-line communication in order to sustain their social networks.
The National Children's Home (2002) study in Britain found that one in four children reported being bullied by mobile phone or on the Internet, while in an Australian study of 120 students in Year 8, over a quarter said they knew someone who had been bullied using technology,(2005). The figures were lowered (6%) when students were asked in England if they received threatening e-mail or text messages when at school (Rivers, 2003). Ybarra and Mitchell (2004) in the United States reported that 15% of their sample identified themselves as Internet bullies while 7% said they had been targeted on-line.
2. Child and adolescent victims of cyber bullying do not believe adults take this form of bullying seriously
Critics of the current level of action taken against cyber bullies and to protect their targets note that there is a wide-spread belief among young victims of cyber-bullies that the adults in their lives do not take the problem seriously. They also do not appear to believe that there is any effective action which can be taken to stop cyber-bullying.
The best friend of the fourteen-year-old Victorian high school student who recently killed herself, stated that some other students had begun teasing her friend about her appearance. She further stated that she and her friend believed that there was nothing that could be done about this sort of bullying. She claimed, 'Cyber-bullying is a problem but I don't really think there is any way that we could stop it.'
It has further been claimed that many parents and schools are not sufficiently proactive in addressing this problem and that this relative inactivity foster the belief among the targets of cyber-bullies that nothing either can or will be done to help them.
Research indicates that in the home, the location of the computer is an important issue that parents need to consider carefully. It has been urged that parents take back the power to control the technology, as they do other issues. It has also been stated that schools could assist in parent education to this end and encourage parents to talk to young people about the technology. In this way young people would be made aware that adults do know something about the technology and they can seek help from adults when they need to.
3. Many young people do not report cyber bullying
The United Stated National Crime Prevention Center study found that only 10% of those young people who were cyber bullied told their parents about the incident, and that a mere 18% of the cases were reported to a local or national law enforcement agency. A second American study found that of the 42% of those studied who said that they had been 'bullied online' almost 60% had never told their parents about the incident.
On Chris Webster's anti cyber bullying Internet site, the claim is made, 'A third of those who experience cyber bullying do not report it. If we are to succeed in preventing bullying, we need to break the climate of silence in which it thrives by empowering children and young people to speak out and seek help.'
Critics of the policies and practices currently adopted by governments and schools argue that if these policies and practices were working then the extent of reporting of cyber bullying would be far higher.
The Australian federal government has acknowledged there is a problem that has yet to be properly addressed. Federal Education Minister, Julia Gillard has stated that 'cyber bullying is cruel .. torturous and intimidating .. as the federal government releases two reports showing bullying by mobile phones and the internet is on the rise and under-reported.'
The research Ms Gillard referred to involved seven-thousand young people from 124 schools around the nation.
Ms Gillard indicated that many young people do not report incidents of cyber bullying ... The Australian Covert Bullying Prevalence Study says one in four students in Years 4 to 9
experience bullying every few weeks and that many of these bullying incidents go unreported.
4. Cyber bullying is particularly harmful because it is taking a wide and growing range of forms
Those who are concerned that Australian governments and schools are not doing enough to curb cyber bullying note that the problem is actually increasing. They observe that advances in technology are dramatically increasing the means that can be used to bully and intimidate.
Studies have shown that, of the technologies available, chat rooms are currently where the most cyber bullying occurs, with various sources finding anywhere between 45% - 57% of all incidents originating there.
Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are growing fast, and so are the cyber-bullying incidents originating from them. Experts believe that they will soon overtake chat rooms as the top source of cyber bullying problems worldwide.
Cell phone cameras and digital cameras are also a growing problem in the cyber-bullying world. A recent United States survey found that 10% of 770 young people surveyed were made to feel 'threatened, embarrassed or uncomfortable' by a photo taken of them using a cell-phone camera.
According to extensive research on middle school age students and teenagers online, the fastest growing problems within the world of cyber-bullying are stealing an individual's name and password to a social networking site, then using their profile to post rumors, gossip or other damaging information; altering photographs using PhotoShop or other photo editing software in order to humiliate the individual; recording conversations without the individual's knowledge or consent, then posting the call online; creating confrontational and mean-spirited online polls about the individual and posting them on different web sites; and using web sites and blogs to post hurtful, embarrassing information about another individual.
Queensland University of Technology cyber bullying expert, Dr Marilyn Campbell, says bullying is deeply embedded in our society and that the transition between the playground and technology use is seamless. According to Campbell, young people do not make a distinction between their online social life and offline social life.
Dr Campbell has said, 'We have a bullying culture which kids learn and they grow up with technology as a social medium, not just the communications that adults use it for. Even though there are good things about that, such as connecting with people, there's also a dark side.'
5. Cyber bullying is particularly harmful and difficult to contain because it is anonymous and invades the privacy of the target's home
It has been noted that one of the things that makes cyber bullying particularly insidious is that it often takes place anonymously within the privacy of the target's own home.
Caslon Analytics is an Internet site seeking to give information to the business community and broader society on the manner in which the law might regulate technology. The Caslon Analytics site states, 'Cyber bullying may ... take place 24/7, rather than being quarantined to a few horrendous hours in transit or in the playground. It can invade the target's personal space - for instance a bedroom - and what the target and associates perceive as personal space (for example, a profile on MySpace and other social network services or a blog on which the author allows comments).'
It is claimed that cyber bullying is particularly harmful because there is no place of refuge from it. As noted, it can invade areas like the target's home or bedroom which are usually seen as a place of refuge. It is also claimed that this form of bullying is harmful because it can be anonymous which makes it seem impossible for the target to take any action against the bully.
Sophie Reid, a child psychologist from the Royal Children's Hospital, believes cyber bullying is more toxic than playground bullying because it is often anonymous, allowing children to be more cruel.
Dr Reid has stated, 'The victim can't tell on the kid because they don't know who's actually doing the bullying so they feel very out of control. One of the things that leads to depression is that sense of feeling out of control.'
Dr Reid added, 'They (bullies) take photos of each other with mobile phones or videos that are ugly then they pop them on websites like Facebook. It's horrible. They can go to a revolting porn site and enter someone else's email address in there and that person receives spam from that website. Alternatively they might set up an email address with someone else's name in it with Gmail or Hotmail and then start sending revolting messages so it seems like they are the ones who are doing it.'
Similarly, Susan Limber, professor of psychology at Clemson University, said in an interview that appeared in a publication of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, 'a student willing to abuse technology can easily wield great power over his or her target just by having the ability to reach a large audience, and often by hiding his or her identity.'
Those who believe that Australian governments and schools have not done enough to deal with this problem stress both of the above aspects. They argue that action must be taken because the target, unaided, will have difficulty dealing with the problem. They also argue that action must be taken because cyber bullying has the capacity to seriously harm its victims.