Comments on: Should we be worried about cyber-bullying?

By: Raili Simojoki

Raili Simojoki — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 04:51:48 +0000

You’re right of course – are we going to stop kids playing in the schoolyard because they might get bullied? So why exclude them from social networking?

Yeah, re anonymity I should probably have said ‘sometimes’ anonymous. Usually it would come out in school gossip circles, I guess, although I never found out who my bully was.

Cheers.

By: Colin

Colin — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 02:29:04 +0000

There’s no solution to cyber-bullying, unless someone comes up with a narcotic beverage that stops kids wanting to pick on other kids. My point is really that cyber-bullying is bullying, so tackling it as a separate problem is going to be misguided and probably ineffective.

Certainly, there are some things that can be done to mitigate cyber-bullying – education and tools like the one described above. But let’s not let the scale of the problem get out of proportion.

By the way, I’m not sure most cyber-bullying is anonymous – when it comes to the kids, I think they usually know who it is.

By: Raili Simojoki

Raili Simojoki — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 02:11:45 +0000

Nice one Colin. I don’t see why Australian stats would differ from those in the European study.

I don’t know much about this area, but given that the internet is slightly addictive, and spending too much time on the computer isn’t necessarily healthy or inspiring, I tentatively think parents should regulate kids’ internet use to some extent. But agree with you that they shouldn’t be barred from Facebook.

The other thing about cyber-bullying is that the perpetrator is often anonymous, making it harder to address the problem by reporting it to an adult. Way back in the 90s, some anonymous flamer left a message about ugly red-heads in my Angelfire guestbook – upsetting at the time, although I’ve since recovered.

Apart from building resilience by allowing access, what solution to cyber-bullying are you advocating?