Cyber Bullying

In the old days, bullying was stealing a boy’s conkers or hiding a girl’s hair ribbons; with modern technology it has become more complex. Paul Spencer Ellis, Headmaster of the Royal Alexandra & Albert School explains.

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The term ‘Cyber Bullying’ seems to be over-complicating the simple. So let us start with a fundamental question:   What is bullying?

My school’s Behaviour Management Policy gives the following bullet point definition:

It is a type of aggressive behaviour.
It involves the physical/psychological abuse of others.
It is intentional, premeditated and calculated.
It sometimes exhibits itself in the form of racial or sexual harassment.
It can involve repeated action over an extended period of time.
The aggression is unprovoked.
The bully is generally perceived by the victim to be stronger.
The victim does not feel that he/she is in a position to retaliate at the time of the incident/s.

This covers the manifestations of bullying that we most commonly remember from school: hair pulling and name calling. This definition does not identify how the bullying is carried out – that will depend upon the bully, the victim and their individual circumstances.

Physical bullying can vary from one child hitting another to a child stealing another’s trainers or tearing up their carefully written French essay. Psychological bullying covers a child shouting ‘Fatty, you smell’ and another saying ‘Let’s not be friends with her’ – bullying by girls can be much more insidious.

Most of us do not see the need to distinguish between those forms of bullying – the difference is simply the method used. ‘Cyber Bullying’ is simply bullying using the technology which is available to our children. So how does this type of bullying manifest itself?

We all give our children mobile phones: “So helpful if they need to be picked up early when a match is cancelled and I feel safer if he/she has a mobile and can contact me”   says the caring parent.   But have you ever read your child’s text message in-box? ‘Of course not. I trust my child. And I do so dislike the way they write: C U 4 T. Anyway, I am not sure I would understand all her texts.’

A common form of bullying is so, so simple. A sends a message to B which is mildly critical of C.   B sends the message on to C and a dozen other classmates. A simple incident of one child being critical of another has suddenly escalated into a potentially significant incident, in which children take sides and the original message sender feels threatened and vulnerable. If the same exchange had been a conversation in the playground, then it would probably have gone no further, particularly as B might have said ‘No, I think C is OK.’

Whose child has a mobile phone that does not take photos?   Not many parents can now answer ‘Mine !’. So a child takes a photo of a friend doing something stupid or naughty. The photo is transmitted from phone to phone until it gets into the hands of one who does not like the child in the photo. The photo, together with the caption: ‘The School Slut’ is soon doing the rounds and causing real anguish to the subject of the photo.

I am not, of course, saying that our children should not have mobile phones – a suggestion which no parent can reasonably enforce other than perhaps for financial reasons! What I am suggesting is that the mobile phone is a common vehicle for bullying nowadays and that, as parents, we need to cultivate openness in talking about it. Children may not wish to admit that they are being bullied by phone because they feel it was, originally, in some way their fault.

Another question for today’s caring parents: Have you ever used MSN or another messaging system ? The answer is, to a certain extent, a generational one – as the older you are the less you are likely to reply in the affirmative. But if you are not familiar with messaging then you know nothing about one aspect of your child’s social life.

Children sometimes write awful things about each other – safe in the knowledge that the message was sent to a good friend. But when good friends have a row, then compromising messages can be passed on to other children. Electronic versions of a playground incident of name-calling are nastier, can go on longer and are in no danger of being interrupted by an observant teacher.

When did you, caring parents, last look at your child’s Homepage? If you cannot answer, ‘Quite recently’, then I suggest you, like most parents, are not able to find out about another major element of your child’s social life.

Your child’s Homepage might be on any one of a dozen social networking sites such as Bebo, MySpace or Facebook. No sane parent would allow a thirteen year old girl to go into the Town Centre and hand out leaflets giving their name, a cute photo and often their address and phone number or at least the name of their school, as well as offering a way of contacting them without you, the parents, knowing. But that is, in all probability the information that your child’s Homepage contains, and it is available to anyone of any age (and of any intention) who has internet access.

It is important to say that many children (and adults) who use social networking sites do not experience any problems, but, there again, not all smokers contract lung cancer. A risk needs to be recognised for what it is. Nobody knows how many adults actually have a sexual interest in children, but such people do exist and a Homepage which gives too much information can be an easy start for a paedophile, working under an assumed identity – often, apparently, a child of the same sort of age – to establish friendly contact.

My own school has just over 400 boarders, ranging in age from 7 to 18. They have access to the internet and e-mail before lessons, at lunchtime and after school.   In theory all social networking and messaging sites are banned by our filter system, but I know that pupils in all schools simply regard this as a challenge and work tirelessly to beat the filters!   For this reason we have installed Securus, a second line of defence, which records every screen that each child looks at, together with full details of date, time, which computer and what internet address. The system is set to identify anything suspicious and one day we were alerted to a thirteen-year-old pupil “chatting”. She had no idea of the true identity of the person at the other computer and the security system revealed that she had received the message ‘This will be our little secret’.   You can imagine how relieved the parents were when we warned them of this danger to their daughter and also informed the Police.

So. ‘Have you been paying attention at the back? What have you learned?’ The attentive caring parent knows that a mobile phone and Internet access on the home PC are both potential sources of danger for their children.   But this does not make them intrinsically evil.

What is important is to talk – preferably over the dinner table – to our children about aspects of their lives that some parents simply do not know about. Learn to chat with your child about who their friends are (Fathers: can you name your daughter’s five best friends? If not, how will you know to react if she has a nasty text from Amanda?). Try communicating with them by MSN or text – it will make these means of communication seem less of a secret world unknown to you as adults. Above all keep the lines of communication open at home. We probably do not wish to know everything that our children say or do, but we must strive to create a climate in which they will tell us when they are unhappy about something on their mobile phone or the Internet.

Paul Spencer Ellis is Headmaster of the Royal Alexandra and Albert School, Reigate.