Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying: A whole-school community issue

Key Safety Advice

The whole school community has a part to play in ensuring cyber safety. Understanding children and young people’s online lives and activities can help adults respond to situations appropriately and effectively. Asking children and young people to show adults how technologies and services work is a useful strategy that can provide an important learning opportunity and context for discussing online safety.

For children and young people

• Always respect others – be careful what you say online and what images you send.
• Think before you send – whatever you send can be made public very quickly and could 
  stay online forever.
• Treat your password like your toothbrush – keep it to yourself. Only give your mobile number or personal website address to trusted friends.
• Block the bully – learn how to block or report someone who is behaving badly.
• Don’t retaliate or reply!
• Save the evidence – learn how to keep records of offending messages, pictures or online conversations.
• Make sure you tell:
• an adult you trust, or call a helpline like ChildLine on 0800 1111 in confidence;
• the provider of the service; check the service provider’s website to see where to report incidents; 
• your school – your teacher or the anti-bullying coordinator can help you.

Finally, don’t just stand there – if you see cyberbullying going on, support the victim and report the bullying. How would you feel if no one stood up for you?

For parents and carers

• Be aware, your child may as likely cyberbully as be a target of cyberbullying. Be alert to 
  your child seeming upset after using the internet or their mobile phone. This might involve subtle comments or changes in relationships with friends. They might be unwilling to talk or be secretive about their online activities and mobile phone use.
• Talk with your children and understand the ways in which they are using the internet and their mobile phone. See the seven key messages for children (on the left) to get you started.
• Use the tools on the service and turn on in-built internet safety features.
• Remind your child not to retaliate.
• Keep the evidence of offending emails, text messages or online conversations.
• Report cyberbullying:
• Contact your child’s school if it involves another pupil, so that they can take appropriate action.
• Contact the service provider.
• If the cyberbullying is serious and a potential criminal offence has been committed, you should consider contacting the police.

 

When and How to Contact the Service Provider

Mobile phones

All UK mobile phone operators have nuisance call centres set up and / or procedures in place to deal with such instances. They may be able to change the number of the person being bullied. Mobile operators cannot bar a particular number from contacting a phone, but some phone handsets do have this capacity. Action can be taken against the bully’s phone account (e.g. blocking their account) only with police involvement.

Contacts:

• O2: ncb@o2.com or 08705214000.
• Vodafone: 191 from a Vodafone phone or 08700700191 for Pay Monthly customers and 08700776655 for Pay as you Go.
• 3: Call 333 from a 3 phone or 08707330333.
• Orange: Call 450 on an Orange phone or 07973100450 for Pay as you Go, or 150 or 07973100150 for Pay Monthly.
• T-Mobile: Call 150 on a T-Mobile phone or 08454125000.

Social networking sites (e.g., MySpace, Bebo, Piczo)

It is good practice for social network providers to make reporting incidents of cyberbullying easy, and thus have clear, accessible and prominent reporting features. Many of these reporting features will be within the profiles themselves, so they are ‘handy’ for the user. If social networking sites do receive reports about cyberbullying, they will investigate and can remove content that is illegal or breaks their terms and conditions in other ways. They can delete the accounts of those who have broken the rules.

Contacts of some social network providers:

• Bebo: reports can be made by clicking on a ‘Report Abuse’ link located below the user’s profile photo (top left-hand corner of screen) on every Bebo profile page. Bebo users can also report specific media content (i.e. photos, videos, widgets) to the Bebo customer services team by clicking on a ‘Report Abuse’ link located below the content they wish to report.
• MySpace: reports can be made via the ‘Contact MySpace’ link, which is accessible at the bottom of the MySpace homepage (http://uk.myspace.com), and at the bottom of every page within the MySpace site.
• Piczo: reports can be made within the service (there is a ‘Report Bad Content’ button at the top of every member page). At the bottom of the home page and on the ‘Contact Us’ page there is a link to a ‘Report Abuse’ page. The ‘Report Abuse’ page can be found at: 
  http://pic3.piczo.com/public/piczo2/piczoAbuse.jsp.

Video-hosting sites

It is possible to get content taken down from video-hosting sites, though the content will need to be illegal or have broken the terms of service of the site in other ways. On YouTube, perhaps the most well-known of such sites, it is possible to report content to the site provider as inappropriate. In order to do this, you will need to create an account (this is free) and log in, and then you will have the option to ‘flag content as inappropriate’. The option to flag the content is under the video content itself. YouTube provides information on what is considered inappropriate in its terms of service. See www.youtube.com/t/terms section 5C.

Instant Messenger (e.g. Windows Live Messenger or MSN Messenger)

It is good practice for Instant Messenger (IM) providers to have visible and easy-to-access reporting features on their service. Instant Messenger providers can investigate and shut down any accounts that have been misused and clearly break their terms of service. The best evidence for the service provider is archived or recorded conversations, and most IM providers allow the user to record all messages.

Contacts of some IM providers:

• MSN: When in Windows Live Messenger, clicking the ‘Help’ tab will bring up a range of options, including ‘Report Abuse’ and there is also an online feedback form at:
  http://support.msn.com/default.aspx?mkt=en-gb to report on a range of products including MSN Messenger.
• Yahoo!: When in Yahoo! Messenger, clicking the ‘Help’ tab will bring up a range of options, including ‘Report Abuse’.

Chatrooms, individual website owners / forums, message board hosts

It is good practice for chat providers to have a clear and prominent reporting mechanism to enable the user to contact the service provider. Users that abuse the service can have their account deleted. Some services may be moderated, and the moderators will warn users posting abusive comments or take down content that breaks their terms of use.

Conclusion

Technology is great and offers fantastic opportunities for children. However, the technology can be misused, and this can be very painful for those, both children and teachers, who are the targets of cyberbullying. Adults need to help children and young people prepare for the hazards whilst promoting the many learning and social opportunities available.

Tackling cyberbullying will be an ongoing process as technology continues to develop. If you would like the full guidance produced by the DCSF and Childnet, see:

www.teachernet.gov.uk/publications
www.digizen.org

How is Technology Used to Bully?

Technology can be used both positively and negatively. The table below explores the range of ways today’s technology can be used.

Technology:	Great for:	Examples of misuse:
Mobile phones	Keeping in touch by voice or text, taking and sending pictures and film, listening to music, playing games, going online and sending emails. Useful in emergency situations and for allowing children a greater sense of independence.	Sending nasty calls or text messages, including threats, intimidation, harassment. Taking and sharing humiliating images. Videoing other people being harassed and sending these to other phones or internet sites.
Instant Messenger (IM)	Text or voice chatting live with friends online. A quick and effective way of keeping in touch even while working on other things.	Sending nasty messages or content. Using someone else’s account to forward rude or mean messages via their contacts list.
Chatrooms and message boards	Groups of people around the world can text or voice chat live about common interests. For young people, this can be an easy way to meet new people and explore issues which they are too shy to talk about in person.	Sending nasty or threatening anonymous messages. Groups of people deciding to pick on or ignore individuals. Making friends under false pretences – people pretending to be someone they’re not in order to get personal information that they can misuse in a range of ways – e.g. by spreading secrets or blackmailing.
Email	Sending electronic letters, pictures and other files quickly and cheaply anywhere in the world.	Sending nasty or threatening messages. Forwarding unsuitable content including images and video clips, or sending computer viruses. Accessing someone else’s account, e.g. to forward personal emails or delete emails.
Webcams	Taking pictures or recording messages. Being able to see and talk to someone live on your computer screen. Bringing far-off places to life or video conferencing.	Making and sending inappropriate content. Persuading or threatening young people to act in inappropriate ways. Using inappropriate recordings to manipulate young people.
Social network sites	Socialising with your friends and making new ones within online communities. Allowing young people to be creative online, even publishing online music. Personalising homepages and profiles, creating and uploading content.	Posting nasty comments, humiliating images / video. Accessing another person’s account details and sending unpleasant messages, deleting information or making private information public. Groups of people picking on individuals by excluding them. Creating fake profiles to pretend to be someone else, e.g. to bully, harass or get the person into trouble.
Video hosting sites	Accessing useful educational, entertaining and original creative video content and uploading your own.	Posting embarrassing, humiliating film of someone.
Virtual Learning Environments  (VLEs)	School site, usually available from home and school, set up for tracking and recording student assignments, tests and activities, with message boards, chat and IM.	Posting inappropriate messages or images. Hacking into someone else’s account to post inappropriate comments or delete schoolwork.
Gaming sites, consoles and virtual worlds	Live text or voice chat during online gaming between players across the world, or on handheld consoles with people in the same local area.Virtual worlds let users design their own avatars – a figure that represent them in the virtual world.	Name-calling, making abusive / derogatory remarks. Players may pick on weaker or less experienced users, repeatedly killing their characters. Forwarding unwanted messages to other devices in the immediate vicinity.