Schools and families have a precise responsibility in teaching the new generations how to build and maintain a positive socialization.

Positive socialization is neither an innate attitude nor a natural behaviour, given for granted that the governing rule of the world is the homo homini lupus principle.

Positive socialization is always the result of both education and respectful behaviour. Every human relationship built on education and respect fosters a positive socialization that is based on trust and mutual respect.

The term socialization means how humans interact one another; it’s a continuous process whereby an individual acquires a personal identity and learns the norms, values, behavior, and social skills appropriate to his or her social position.

Thus, socialization happens every day, everywhere, anywhere and it also happens seamlessy, ranging from a simple contact or a particular request, to the specific way of belonging to and participating in small teams with the other teammates, or within the family where few people interact each other, to more and more complex and continuous interactions within the same school or in the same context or community where one lives.

The larger the number of those who interact, the more difficult the mechanisms of socialization and extremely challenging to make it positive.

Socialization takes also several forms with increasing level of difficulty from plain one-to-one interactions to specific conducts and behaviours within a small tribe and it becomes harder to build in larger communities where a person is forced to stay and cohexist with others.

Nobody prevails, nobody wants to win, nobody dictates where all the people build positive socialization, but everyone gets respect and motivation to cooperate and interact with one another.

Thus, where there’s positive socialization nobody has necessarily to impose, but if anything, expose in order to get respect, trust, and reach the common goals.

Building and maintaining positive socialization is like promoting assertiveness along with respect for one another, value for empathy and a shared sense of responsibility.

But all these commandments make sense only when they are built up upon the supreme principle of respect for others and human dignity in the first place.

Where there’s respect for human dignity, there are also friendship and peaceful interactions built on trust.

Trust is the most powerful conflict detonator. What fosters trust is respect. There is no trust without respect. Conflict not necessarily has to be banned but rather managed through conciliation, convergence and tolerance.

Positive socialization must have tolerance, respect and trust as its natural foundations.

Only by means of tolerance, every difference, either in opinions or in behaviours, can be accepted and overcome.

On the other side, there are disrespect, arrogance, discriminations, bullying.

Bullying is exactly the opposite of tolerance and respect. Bullying is the negation of any positive socialization.

Harassment, injuries, menaces, beatings and kicks threat and trample on every attempts of socialization.

And the dark side of bullying is the strength of its virality and contagion.

Moreover, in dealing with bullying, the real challenge is to overcome the risk of any emotional contagion both towards the victims and towards the bullies.

In other words, it has to be minimized both the risk of tolerance towards the bullies and the risk of losing respect for the victims.

In such circumstances, what is needed is that we reconvert our judgements and suppress our prejudices, both those aiming at condemning and punishing the bullies and those aiming at excluding et marginalizing the victims.

That means to put in practice all that is needed to create a positive socialization.

It takes responsibility and wisdom to deal with bullying and it is up to parents, families, teachers and schools.

They can decide wisely, they must act wisely against all forms of bullying and violence in behalf of everyone, for the everyone’s health and safety. In the name of positive socialization.

The primary goal of schools and families must be building identities.

Building identities means to intercept and canalize energies into learning paths built up on ethics, respect and continuous dialogue with others.

Schools and families have to address children’s issues by giving them credible examples, by showing interest for them and for the relationship with one another.

Schools and families must teach how to manage problems and solve conflicts; they cannot hide them or pretend their children stay silent.

Silence is the worst enemy for socialization.

Schools and families have to teach their children how to gain control of their emotions without canceling or stopping them.

Children are tomorrow’s people, they are infinite possibilities waiting to become reality.

That is means that schools, teachers, families and parents must enhance such possibilites, by forging all their emotional, psychological and relational attitudes and traits.

Schools and families are the cornerstone of the socialization and the fulcrum of child’s psychological development and psychosocial well-being, not only as an individual but also as tomorrow’s person.

Only by doing so it will be possible to build the foundations for their empowerment as tomorrow’s citizens of a more human society.

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A positive socialization means promoting a social interaction inspired by positive values such as trust and respect through education instead of punishment. A positive socialization also means letting the problems come out themselves instead of inculpating and incriminating someone elses.
But that doesn’t imply that bullying, harassment and violence are justified as a “game” or as a “caper“.
Violence is always something to condemn and eradicate by anyone, anytime, anywhere.
That is is the only approach possible and worth teaching, both in schools and in families. Bullying is not a normal part of life; nothing can be tolerated that nobody should tolerate. No possibility, no room for bullying should be allowed.
Both schools and families must raise such awareness against bullying in order to shape and reshape tomorrow’s citizens.
The seeds to strengthen the new generations require a favorable ground that must be fueled by trust and self-esteem together with social competencies.
The more bullying is known the less the fear to speak out the greater the courage to stand up to it.

Fighting bullying is more than a moral imperative or a “teens’ issue”.

Fighting bullying and raising awareness about the necessity of “no more bullying” mean setting measurable targets and checking on them regularly.

Without targets nothing gests measured and nothing changes.

And it’s also necessary to go one step further by convincing the young that violence is never the right path.

Anti-bullying initiatives and campaigns can only deliver results if they are systematically delivered throughout the school and the online communities where teens and tweens live their sparetime.
“No more bullying” means creating a sense of justice and guard against discriminations, unconscious or not, in order to help the victims up both those who speak out and those who remain silent and almost invisible.
And then a cultural change must be fueled.
The rewards – a more ethical society and a bully-free world – are worth it.
The power to change and to keep moving forward lies in our hands.

No more bullying is up to us.

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No specific law has been issued in Italy at the moment but the already existing laws (Constitution of The Italian Republic, part one Rights and Duties of the Citizens, The Civil Code, The Penal Code) represent an almost complete regulatory mechanism able to prevent and punish the most severe behaviours.

Enter Mobbible’s Convivio to see more about legislation in Italy.

Bullying in Italy has become increasingly frequent: bullying events have become ordinary and the number of victims becomes greater and greater. Sometimes bullying is captured in videos downloaded in Youtube by the same people that bystand and do nothing instead of stopping violence.

Bystanders stay silent or incite the bully during the aggression without intervening.

Several studies refer a close correlation between bullying and depression, bullying and suicidal rate. Bullying-related suicides have soared last year since the number of bad stories and bad behaviours increased, altough institutions, schools and the Police raised awareness through several anti-bullying campaigns.

Victims are always those who can’t defend themselves or who don’t want to collude with bullies as depicted in our latest post “Why Bullying Victims Portrait Is Always the Same“.

Morever, 80% of bullying in Italy happens at schools. Threats, physical violence, name-calling, embarrassment, thefts, mockeries, all these behaviours happen at schools and have as victims people who are the weakiest or the most defenceless of the group.

The ghost of bullying haunts every school and every community.

The shadow of bullying lengthens through the web, by means of cyberbullying, online harassment, compromising photos or false data sharing and other psychological tortures as explained in this post about bullying and cyberbullying in Italy by Metron Antropos NPO.

The tweens and the young tend to escape parental control and monitoring, they go away and take dangerous shortcuts, with less and less brakes, and no positive role models to imitate.

Sport can do a lot in order to make any negative energy turn in healthier ways, in some positive experience, or hopefully in a safe way out.

Other forms of intervention tend to build, enhance and strenghten learning, training or education at schools in order to change culture and habits.

In a recent survey,  Skuola.net found that 4-in-5 consider bullying and cyberbullying an ordinary and severe occurrence, while up to 40% of them has witnessed to at least one severe physical or psychological bullying event.

As for cyberbullying, 90% believe that the web is exactly the mirror of what happens offline, in the real life, and sometimes the second is the origin of the first.

The most controversial social network is Ask.fm, taken for granted the resonance of recent severe cyberbullying facts and stories, strictly connected to this networking platform mentioned by 3-in-4 students because of its anonymity and ease to use.

One-in-four admit having been themselves guilty of cyberbully, threatening or victimising one or more friends, while 6% refer having been a systematic cyberbully.

Up to 31% is always connected to social networks, by means of smartphones, tablets, PCs, and 27% has met offline at least someone known online.

Of those, 23% did it by themselves, without informing anyone else, whereas 35% informed their parents or friends.

The web is also used by tweens in order to make new friends: 13% posted photos, video, in a provocative gesture while 17% admitted having done it for money, phone top-ups or other presents.

These are the findings of a survey over 2000 voters aged 11-20 managed by Skuola.net together with Postal Office Policy before launching “Una Vita da Social” campaign.

Time spent over social networks is basically due to their obsession in controlling their own social profiles, or in making new friends or gaining money.

Of those who are always connected online, 45% use social networks because they can save money for phone calls, while 42% repeteadly use them to make new friends.

Only 14% stay online to gain more popularity.

53% of interviewed use Facebook to communicate with their parents. 1-in-5 consider Facebook their main social network and media and 56% believe it’s very useful even if it’s not used to replace phone calls and sparetime with friends.

What is worrying is that 13% of young used at least one social network to send their photo or video for sexting.

The reason is that 17% received the promise of a phone recharge or other presents.

They are totally unware of risks, one-in-four admits having met someone online and of those 23% did it without informing others.

As for cyberbullying, 52,5% declared an excessive attention to it, able to make them feel guilty and overexposed to judgement instead of understanding and dialogue.

And the problem is that they don’t speak with their parents because they are afraid and don’t want to be judged or think they can’t help them and do nothing.

Relaunching families would be an answer to that problem.

Relaunching families means investing permanently in family and resuming love and dialogue.

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