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.

The post No More Bullying appeared first on Mobbible.

How to stop bullying through dialogue?

When it comes to bullying, it’s crucial for parents and teachers to know what to ask their children, how to talk with them, which words to use.

As for what to ask, teachers must gather all the elements needed to get the big picture and immediately make an overall evaluation of the situation at a glance.

In order to do that, they have to listen carefully to their children’s stories without showing anger or anxiety. They have to suggest, whisper, not impose in order to restore the relationship.

They must be coaches, not masters nor judges. They must rather be like strategists.

Indeed they have to look after their children and, at the same time, envision consequences of any action. They have to set up a real and accurate strategy in order to put in place the needed actions to block or remove their children’s accounts from a blog or a social network, to cancel their photo taken online, to stop provocative messages or cyberattacks.

On the other side, parents and teachers must contact or go on involving other parents in order to engage the entire community so that the problem gets shared and all the possible solutions are openly discussed and translated in actionable tips.

Every viable option must be assessed in order to stop the violence and any attempt to make disclosure about it must be encouraged.

Thus silence strengthens the abuse and those who stay silent collude with the abusers.

So, before denouncing the bullying cases to the police, bullying events would rather be shared across the communities in order to raise awareness among people and also point out the correct behaviours.

It’s also important not to blame anyone for being victim or doing nothing to defend himself or herself and stop the violence.

As for how to talk, in every situation it’s always necessary to create an atmosphere of security, calm, understanding, comprehension and fear restraint.

Then, words follow.

Dialogue cannot be one way. It’d rather be a continuous process that should be promoted early from within the family and never interrupted.

Parents must listen to their children more than once and must know perfectly when it’s time to ask for someone else’s help because of the seriousness of the events.

Expecially in cyberbullying, the risk is the loss of control due to the exasperation of violence through repeated online attacks which make the evil chain have an exponential virality and ferocity.

Cyberbullying is always an out of control phenomenon whose boundaries are difficult to define and circumscribe. So it’s extremely crucial to intervene immediately. Indeed, its perverse cycle is much heavier than bullying.

Anonymity, pervasivity and difficulty of traceability make cyberbullying more threatful than traditional bullying.

as explained in our latest post. The main characteristic is the climax of violence that becomes progressively but rapidly persecution by means of intentional and systematic online attacks once the victim is connected.

The persecution is also strengthened by a supposed online anonymity, by the absence of every physical contact and by the larger visibility and resonance towards an enormous number of potential visitors, viewers and bystanders.

So, what happens online finds less obstacles, smaller resistances and hesitations and fewer brakes than in the offline.

The violence runs through the digital devices and rises up until no perception and no awareness of the consequences of such bad behaviours remain.

The loss of the awareness of evil is the worst side of violence. As persecutors gain momentum in violence, they progressively loose control until they loose every sense of guilt.

Thus the more the physical distance between persecutor and victim, the weaker the perception of the relationship between action and consequences, the less the perceived responsibility for causing suffering to the victims.

And that is always the tragic epilogue of the violence.

The post How To Stop Bullying Through Dialogue appeared first on Mobbible.

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.

.

The post Focus: Bullying in Italy appeared first on Mobbible.

Bullying is the mirror of the bad health of our society, communities and definitely schools.

The growing isolation and egoism of humans has led to a total lack of interest in one another and ever-greater alienation. Indeed, alienation is the consequence of insecurity, vulnerability, fear, mistrust and suspicion toward the others.

Alienation, along with the persisting financial crisis and its serious consequences in terms of job insecurity, has increased uncertainty and caused the fall of every positive role model, thus contributing to the decline of families, the annihilation of every human possibility of redemption or simply of every change needed to improve living conditions.

Together with inequality and social unjustice, alienation has also built a shared perception of an ever-greater impoverishment of social capital.

Everyone lives apart from the others, alone, close in a predominant particularism, walking in a solitary landscape, in a defensive individualistic closeness, far from any contact and relationship with the collectivity whatever it is.

We are living in times of exponentially widespread solitary socialization where there is no space to recovery time or attention for another human in trouble or in needs. In such a world there is neither space for solidarity nor space for do-able responsibility to overcome indifference.

And the consequence is that the stronger prevails over the weaker while the majority just bystand.

This is true everywhere, in the larger as well as in the smaller communities, in the workplaces as well as schools. Things are always the same, things aren’t different in the smaller level as if we stay at the mirror: they reflect exactly what happens at a larger or bigger level.

There is no space for empathy. Every group, and thus every collectivity reflects the same dynamics.

But Jeremy Rifkin foreshadows about the rise of the Age of Empathy, where he imagines the race to global consciousness in a world in crisis, under the sign of an empathy-altruism able to move it towards an empathic civilization.

What is empathy? Empathy is the opposite of bullying.

Empathy is about altruism, generosity, gratitude and compassion.

Empathy is about being humans, which means building and maintaining human relationships. This is empathy.

No empathy is possible without human relationships. All humans must be emphatic to each others.

There is empathy when everyone rediscovers the sense of his/her existence in a dialectic relationship with the entire group and the others’ lives and perceives his/her own inclusion as a dialectic mechanism intrinsically necessary and vital to the total entity existence as the group itself is.

It’s the superior interest of the combination and integration of single elements that is worth striving for, since it also enables that every single element’s individuality coexists and takes part to the collectivity entity without destroying the single elements, but by strengthening and empowering them.

In bullying it’s evident that human relationship doesn’t exist. What is common in all events of bullying it’s the absence of every relationship.

There is no perception of the severity of commitment to violence or to indifference, no conscience of offence, sin, guilt, and once such conscience emerges, it’s always too late and after a long way run.

The evil is everywhere, even masked as normality.

So bullying is everywhere even masked as ordinary behaviour.

Bullying is ordinary evil. Bystanding is the same.

All those who stay silent are guilty, no exceptions. None of them really cares about human relationship.

The internal code of every bullying event is the fact that the other doesn’t exist and there is always for everyone a turning point with a very hard juncture: to accept the group’s rule and become a group’s member as gregary or on the contrary to refuse, to dissent, to diverge from the group and become the group’s target as the enemy to be ostracized from the group itself.

Empathy and its relationship-related focus is a lifelong lesson that should be taught in all schools in order to prevent or fight bullying.

It’s always more effective to intervene within the group internal dynamics in order to promote a collective answer by valuing, teaching and instilling the value of relationship and empathy rather than stigmatising the single role, responsibility or psychology involved in order to find a psychological reason to bad behaviours as well as bullying.

The post The Opposite of Bullying is Empathy appeared first on Mobbible.

Families have a central role and a significant weight in preventing bullying or cyberbullying events and victimization.

But to understand that point, it is necessary to re-discover the profound and intrinsic value family has.

Family is the heart of human life, family is the breast, the warmth, it is the most natural and the easiest place where answers and the right path can be found.

Bullying episodes and cyberbullying cases ending with suicides are much more common than ever: even in Italy bullying and cyberbullying have their victims.

While it is not helpful asking to what extent desperation stretches and what kind of mechanism generated abuse, persecution and bullies, nevertheless we cannot accept the absurdity of trunked human lives or broken families, nor can we justify that extreme and dramatic choices. Suspending judgement is due.

However, it is no longer possible to stay indifferent as a spectator.

Being spectator is equal to participate actively to that human life sacrifices. It also means to have neither care nor respect for next generations. While we are working for them and building the foundation of their future we are at the same time contributing to their death. If not physical, emotional and psychological.

So in fighting bullying we must fight the indifference firstly and the fear secondly. Fighting fear and indifference must be perceived as not only an individual commitment but also a collective responsibility.

Bullying is not a personal problem but a pressing and emerging social need.

In coping with such plague everyone can do a great job both in raising awareness and in engaging others to play an active role. Everyone can take part at schools, within sporting clubs, families, peers groups, communities.

Everywhere, everyone can give a personal contribution. Everyone’s commitment is the spark that spreads the necessity to face the emergency.

It is no longer possible to ignore, to let the responsibility pass on others. There are not isolated cases. It is not possible to blame someone else or something else.

No one is guilty. Everyone is guilty. Nor it is even possible to put the blame on how difficult communication is between adults and teens.

Silence is the first problem to fight. The absence of a closer contact, of a sincere and immediate interest and empathy between different generations is always harmful.

Mere surveillance is not enough, nor is it the continuous control over the teens or kids. Such control may be illusory and ineffective, if only relying on inadequate instruments such as inspecting diaries, computers or smartphones. When the awkwardness starts occupying the heart of a child and the perception of being abandoned becomes greater and oppressive, silence reigns and wins.

Monitoring shall not be pursued by means of external tools, but preferably through love and relationship.

But the relationship must be restored or recovered. Once relationship is woken up they have to be reactivated. When the sense of abandoning and the awkwardness become obscure mates of our teens, they follow and overcome them even at home, within the family and become heavier and worse once they enter the social environment.

Group dynamics may be constructive or destructive. Entrance, the acceptance and the permanence into a group are critical components in a critical phase of life as childhood is, they also persist in adulthood and influence the future behavior.

Every group has its rule: there are roles, not written but prescriptive within each group. Once you have a role, you stick to that role. Roles never change. Those who are subjected to them cannot refuse obeying and conforming.

Complacency and fear are the group basic roots and rules. Those rules are unbreakable, the law of the jungle is the law of the strongest. If you don’t respect the rules you will be out of the group. But this golden rule still holds true.

Thus, neither social network nor the web can be incriminated or considered a responsible source of suffering, isolation and a serious menace to our teens or kids.

We cannot demonize the technologies or the virtual places as responsible or root causes of phenomena that occur even in the real places. We should rather invest in someone else’s responsibilities, engagement and commitment.

We should invest in those who can discover, who cannot ignore, who cannot pretend not to know. We should invest in those who are the unique witnesses of their kid’s (or pupils) fears and suffering.

We should invest in those who can stop or prevent the situation from worsening.

We should invest in those who can do a lot but do nothing.

We should invest in families. The youngsters are let alone, more alone than past generations were. More the temptations, more the threats, more the menaces. And the weakest surrender, are excluded, marginalized, discriminated, hated, abused.

Relaunching families means starting from within the problem, but also hitting the bull’s eye.

Relaunching families means investing permanently in families and rebuilding society from the foundation. And then we have to ask ourselves how to restart to be a family how to become parents again, how to be born mother and father, how to recover lost time, how to fill the void, how to break silence and regenerate love feelings and gestures.

We must resume loving. Investing in love means to go on asking for questions each other parent versus kids, kids versus parents.

Restarting from families means restarting from compassion and love. By so doing, we will restart from self confidence, which breaks the fragile bubble of virtual life and illusions of being understood, beloved from people beyond the screen of a PC or the display of a smartphone.

The web is the reign of solitary socialization. Instead of being the place of dialogue, knowledge, connections, it has become the place of solitary people, maybe virtually interconnected but actually disconnected, separate from the real world. There is a viral video - Look Up – which expresses in an effective way such form of isolation, of latent and solitary socialization induced by the social networking.

Being disconnected means to have different languages, different communications styles, different mindsets.

So it’s difficult to intercept the turning point or the breakpoint where something has changed and situation becomes no more tolerable or completely unbearable to youngsters.

When stress created by bullying or cyberbullying translates in pain, suffering, fear, terror, depression, then control is no longer possible and no action can restore the situation.

Only families can intervene early and effectively from within, and can oppose responsible, mature and conscious resistance to bullying, be it real or digital.

The post Why Relaunching Families Means Fighting Bullying From Within appeared first on Mobbible.