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.

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Don’t Stay Oblivious to Cyberbullying!

That should be a moral imperative for each of us in order to raise awareness and start a dialogue with those who are silent victims of cyberbullying.

There are neither rules nor best practices to learn and follow when it comes to cyberbullying. Only those who directly or indirectly experience it, know what it means.

Anyone, anywhere, anytime may become victim of online bullying.

Information sharing over the internet is so effortlessly interwoven with daily life that connectivity is anywhere and anytime, and so online bullying is.

According to a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, fully 73% of adult internet users have seen someone to be harassed online and 40% have personally experienced it.

Thus, four-in-ten internet users are victims of online harassment as target of at least one of the following behaviours:

• 27% have been called offensive names
• 22% have had someone try to purposefully embarrass them
• 8% have been physically threatened
• 7% have been harassed for a long period
• 6% have been sexually harassed.

Cyberbullying as well as bullying remains a social plague that cannot be estinguish, ingrained as it is in our human nature.

The internet in only a place where evil of human nature can spread its contagion and go viral.

No boundaries apply to human nature, no rules can restrict it, no one has the power to prevent the spiral of evil from within but everyone should be called to do something as main stakeholder of societal wellbeing.

All humans may become victims, and everyone may witness as a bystander as in the picture below.

Young people are particularly likely to witness all types of online harassment.

Somewhere, there are some of our brothers and sisters who precisely now need our help.

In all circumstances, knowing how to react to bullying and how to stop the abuse can help someone else or reduce someone else’s pain.

Don’t Stay Oblivious to Cyberbullying!

But nobody should conceive online bullying simply as a generic “homo homini lupus” principle because when it comes to bullying, differently from any other fight, there is always only one wolf or there are some wolves attacking someone who is not a wolf being by far the least helpless and vulnerable creature with an enormous power imbalance compared with the wolves harassing him.

Of those who have been harassed online, 55% (22% of all internet users) have experienced the less severe forms while the rest (18% of all internet users) have fallen victim to any of the more severe kinds of harassment.

Half the times the identity of perpetrators is unknown. That fact enhances the difficulty of any help to victims.

And the victim has often no idea about how he or she can stop the violence.

A large proportion (60%) of those who have experienced it ignored the violence whereas 40% took actions to contrast it by changing username, deleting their own profile, unfriending or blocking the bully, reporting to the website, discussing the incident online or withdrawn from an online forum. Only 5% reported law enforcement while a larger part (47%) confronted the person online.

Online incidents have always an emotional impact, no matter the severity, the kind of harassment and the type of response or action needed to face them.

Any harassment can be very or extremely upsetting and it is side effects may be long lasting and may severely impact reputation.

Institutions, organizations, schools and parents, all together, can do a lot to raise awareness and help victims to overcome the worst consequences.

Institutions, organizations, businesses and any other social partner have an indirect responsibility to promote lawful conducts and reinforce the dissemination of positive values, not only in the offline but also in the online.

Parents, families and teachers have the immediate and direct responsibility towards their children which is enabled only by an ongoing dialogue expecially when children are teens or tweens.

Dialogue doesn’t mean to find a certain solution or the right key to a problem. And it also doesn’t mean the absence of conflict in every case. The real meaning of dialogue is to have an immediate interest and to pay immediate attention to something that cannot be faced alone, even if it would mean dealing with an eventual conflict in order to help someone in difficulty.

Dialogue means not to stay oblivious to cyberbullying.

Dialogue doesn’t really exclude any conflict but it’s a necessary condition to unleash empathy and show promptness to address problems at their first appearance.

Dialogue also means supervision, listening, care, attention, love. It means to have a great sensibility and acumen to perceive, to notice and to realize even alarm bells which are only early signals when something is heavy going down.

Dialogue always begins with listening and goes on with sharing. By listening and sharing it also progressively enables the relationship.

No relationship is possible without dialogue. And that is extremely true within the family and at school.

Refuse staying oblivious to cyberbullying, start a dialogue now with those in need.

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According to the last annual study of the internet security firm McAfee, examining the online behavior and social networking habits of U.S. preteens and teens, titled “2014 Teens and the Screen study: Exploring Online Privacy, Social Networking, and Cyberbullying”, online bullying have soared over the last year: the 87% of youth polled said they have witnessed cyberbullying, up from 27% last year.

Number of occurrences is going to grow in the short term because of a greater awareness among tweens and teens due to anti-bullying education programs and guidelines deployed by teachers within the schools and the quicker and quicker dissemination of cyber codes and rules through social media.

All the data confirm that the major risk of online behavior among teens and preteens is its impact on their offline lives.

Online behaviours can dramatically damage their identity and their reputation.

As for the reason of cyberbullying, 72% answered it was due to appearance, 26% stated their race or religion was the cause while 22% responded their sexuality. Of those who witnessed cyberbullying, 53% referred the victims became defensive or angry while 47% said the victims removed their social media accounts, underscoring its prevalent emotional impact.

The 2014 survey also found that 24% said that they would not know what to do in the event of cyberbullying (“how about stay away from the bully’s page and block the bully from your page?”). A whopping 87% have witnessed cyberbullying and 26% have been victims themselves.

What about the 2013 and 2012 McAfee survey findings ?

According to 2013 McAfee Digital Deception Study 2013: “Exploring the Online Disconnect between Parents & Pre-teens, Teens and Young Adults“, youth spend more time online than parents realize and  their access becomes more mobile as they age.

Teens are particularly savvy with smartphones and tablets but they face online choices that carry potentially dangerous risks.

The major risks are on their social networks, while their parents are unaware: 92.6% of teens said that Facebook was a playground for bullies but only 9 percent of parents knew the truth from their kids. Only 6 percent of parents thought their kids had been targets, against the 13 percent of kids who responded being targeted.

In 2012, almost one in four of teens claimed to be a target of cyberbullying, two-thirds of all teens had witnessed cruel behavior online but only one in 10 parents were aware their teens were targets of cyberbullying.

When witnessing others being attacked, 40% of teens had told the person to stop, 20.7% had told an adult but 6.3% joined in. When being attacked themselves, 65.8% of teens responded to the attacker (with 35% responding in person).

Some of online conflicts are hashed-out in the real world, where 4.5% of teens have been in a physical fight with an online bully, while about 15% avoided school.

Check out the infographic in the article “Why You Should Talk to Kids About Cyberbullying” published in Mashable to know more details about the online behaviour of teens reported by the above mentioned study.

Long story short, it is necessary to take steps to protect kids from cyberbullying.

In the cyberspace bullies hide and thrive better than in the real life. The greater the anonimity, the greater the silence, the greater the abuse.

Parents can’t let their kids alone with their smartphones, tablets or PCs. They must protect them and listen to them even when they aren’t speaking.

Alarmingly, the  most serious threats are due to two undervalued facts:

• Kids Overshare Personal Information
• Kids Hide Things from their Parents.

These are the reasons why much of the online bullying remains undetected and passes by unnoticed despite the good intentions of parents and peers.

Parents, teachers, guardians and coaches have to pay attention to both real and online behaviours in order to detect and notice possible changes, insecurity or fear signals in them.

To help educate their children and envision a safe digital future for them with the benefits of being online and staying safe, three steps are necessary:

1. parents must connect with them and get social
2. parents must gain access
3. parents need their trust.

So, parents have an active responsibility in encouraging them to report online/offline bullying, to take responsibility for their own safety online and to know where to turn for help when things go wrong.

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