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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High social acceptance is common among leaders and doers as well as in followers.

High social acceptance is the key to enter a group, to live in a group, to be accepted as a leader or as a whatever member.

Outside the group there are only those who have a low social acceptance.

Thus, having a low social acceptance means being nobody to the group itself.

Those who have a low social acceptance usually haven’t roles even within other groups as well as friends.

That is why a low social acceptance always associates with a low self-esteem. Nobody wants someone who has a low self-esteem as a friend.

No trust can he/she has from anyone, they stay excluded from leadership positions and also kept away from other roles in the group.

People who have a low social acceptance stay alone, apart, avoided, out of every social connection and social life. Moreover, they feel invisible and unwanted and also tend to feel like they are constantly under a spotlight, being watched and criticized by others.

Hostile interactions create an hostile and unhealthy context, thus leading to social exclusion.

Thus, marginalized people fall more often than others in depression and

become victims without doing anything

as explained in a previous article: “School Bullying: Victims at The Centre of A Persecution”.

Victimisation begins as a subtle but ferocious persecutory mechanism jointly performed by bullies and their gregaries.

The context and the environment reinforce the already existing psychological characteristic, which in turn produces more isolation and a chance for more persecution.

Thus, prevention, as well as intervention against bullying, should focus on both a child-centred approach and the wider context where bullying happens by combining personal, social and health education.

Since psychology influences behaviours, the same psychology can result in a powerful leverage to change behaviours and help tweens and teens become more sociable.

Well-developed social interaction skills are critical for developing positive mindset since childhood. And as they get older, they should be learning more advanced social skills

Social skills must be developed together with emotional coping strategies, since the last are most effective if they are taught together with the first ones.

The earlier they can learn to deal with conflicts, the healthier and safer they will live.

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Bullying is everywhere and it also hurts anyone.

The same are the mechanisms of persecution; the same the effects on the victim.

And their silence strengthens the abuse.

Vulnerability, fear, shame, unsecurity are what bullying victims feel because of bully’s persistent, neverending abuses and persecutory behaviours.

So, how can you help victims to stand up against bullying?

• First of all, don’t let them alone.
• Then, listen to them even when they aren’t speaking.
• Finally, pay attention to their behaviours.

They may not ask for help, but that doesn’t mean that help isn’t wanted. It is up to you to help them to tell the truth or talk to an adult and ask for help.

Encouraging reporting of bullying means being halfway there.

Bullying victims don’t speak out, don’t stand up against bullying because they are afraid. They are alone. No one supports them, neither their peers for fear of reprisals, nor teacher and parents because both of them often ignore the facts.

New media do not represent a threat, but one of the possible means, just a more formidable place for borderline behaviours to happen, ranging from youth deviance to psychology of groups and bullying.

In a complex and almost unexplored environment, as the internet is, early detection and continuous supervision over kids, tweens and teens are aiming at impeding the worst consequences and unlawful conducts connected to those phenomenons.

But the mechanisms by which youth, expecially teens and tweens, become victims or co-authors of internet-related crimes against someone else, be it stalking, injury, diffamation, cyberbullying or identity theft, have always their origin in the real life, where the youth live, act and move.

So, bullying common places are the schools, the gym, the park or other location where entertainment takes place.

Bullying doesn’t consists in a single act of violence or verbal attack; it’s the repetition of violence against someone else that is bullying.

Bullying happens when the attack from a single offence turns into persecution.

Persecution originates from within the social relationships and the one-to-one interactions, but it also generates severe consequences from the legal side and the psychological one.

Moreover, as persecution persistently goes on, it will cause long-term harmful effects on victims.

Only a few victims ask for help and denounce. The most get blocked by fear.

A very small percentage, as we mentioned in the article “Online Bullying Threats and Facts”:

…. 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?”).

are aware of such a violence, of its gravity and consequences.

Young victims don’t know how to defend and why it is absolutely necessary.

The fear of reprisals or punishments from their parents or the risk of not receiving from them their beloved promised smartphones foster the silence of young victims, together with the shame and the fear they feel.

 Silence, Shame and Fear Are #Bullying Best Friends. Put an end to them. Put an end to Bullying. — MBevangelist (@Mobbible) 6 Novembre 2014

So we have to convince and help bullying victims to change their  mind, beliefs, attitudes, in order to get it over with shame, fear and silence.

The post Why Bullying Victims Portrait Is Always the Same appeared first on Mobbible.

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.

The post Online Bullying Threats and Facts 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.

What adults seem to tolerate as a childhood rite of passage it’s a harmful persecution which reveals itself within an environment – the school – whose safety is taken for granted, through different types of aggression.

Bullying hurts everyone, everywhere. Nevertheless the pattern of bullying is persecution.

Someone who is bullied is aware to be at the centre of a persecution. It doesn’t matter what the context is, who the persecutors are, what the root cause is, which the means and the forms are.
The persecution is ever the same.
The same are the mechanisms of generation, the same are the violence escalation, the same are the effect on the victims.

No boundaries apply to bullying, neither cultural, nor geographical or socio-economic.

Everyone becomes a victim without doing anything. There are no exceptions.

There is no way to escape, no way to be sure of not being the next target.
You could be perfectly in the average, undistinguishing from the others, not standing out from the rest but this might not protect you from being bullied.
School bullying hits kids and teens numbing them emotionally, causing nightmares and sleep problems, impairing school performance and leading to aggressive behavior.

School bullying may also generates bullying: bullied teens may turn into bullies.

Every school is at risk, every kid, every teen.

Bullying can be subtle, both psychological (such as spreading rumors or excluding someone) and verbal (making threats or demeaning).

Prevention should be the golden rule. Everywhere it is necessary to take steps to stop it from happening. Prevention should be every school’ s responsibility.

Bullying endangers everyone’s safety in school and is also detrimental for the whole learning cycle. Indeed the violence spiral is always perverse.
Fright, vulnerability and stress  at school are a powerful magnet for bullies’ systematic and continuous persecuting attitudes.

A hostile environment generates hostile interactions among pupils.

Fear feeling are more harmful in pupils than in adults. Rates of bullying in primary and in secondary are worrying.
But only a very few percentage of them  tell a teacher or own parents being bullied.

And that circumstance has relevant implications, among the worst and more perverse consequences of bullying.
Firstly because keeping the silence with teachers and parents make them more and more weakened because they lack the support from those who could help them. Secondly because for that reason they remain isolated, excluded, alone and fall easily prey to bullies.

Where are the peers?

Peers neither see nor listen. Neither help nor bully.
The peers abstein intervening, bystand apart and separate.
Unless they are made to feel they have an obligation to act, they will stay silent. Perhaps they are bullies’ accomplices.
But so by doing, they engage themselves in the persecutory mechanism as the bullies do and the bully’s gregaries.
Their silence strengthens the abuse. Those who deliberately tolerate the bullying-related abuse, silently collude with it.
What are the most common forms that bullying takes?
Bullying is often emotional, through exclusion, emargination, social outcast.
Physical bullying isn’t heavier than verbal or emotional one.
Emotional bullying is as heavy as the other form of bullying because the victim feel a deep and dark sense of insecurity and perceives themselves as being in a net, with no exit, crushed by the incapacity to face such enormous problem.
Bullied pupils can’t defend themselves;  they don’t know how to face the perverse power a bully has over them.
Parents and school can’t let them alone. They have to listen to them even when they aren’t speaking.
They must pay attention to their behaviours, trying distinguishing changes, insecurity or early fear signals.
To raise awareness about school bullying is a precise school responsibility and is up to school to intervene.

Who are the bully’s target ?

Anyone is the bully’s target.
But the ones more vulnerable and the weaker stay much more unsecure, defenceless and easily fall prey to persistent and neverending abuses and persecutory behaviours.
Bullied pupils are forced by fear being passive and silent. They don’t oppose, don’t refuse violence, don’t defend themselves because they are alone and feel alone. No one supports them, neither peers for fear of reprisals nor teachers who ignore the facts.
Encouraging the reporting of bullying along with a strong school policy and commitment to respect each other might be an immediate intervention.
Victims of bullying are more likely to develop mental health problems than other children, and bullies are also more likely to have problems as they get older. In an effort to reduce violence and aggression in schools due to bullying, a large percentage of schools now offer programs that teach anger management, discourage bullying, teach tolerance or raise bullying awareness about psychosocial risks related to bullying.
Depression is supposed to be often a problem for bullied children in adolescence due to social rejection and social outcast.
Parents need to be aware of such risk and be willing to talk about it with their kids and teens.

The post School Bullying: Victims at The Centre of A Persecution appeared first on Mobbible.