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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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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Even if anonymity is true only in appearance, since digital footprints cannot be removed, all the above mentioned characteristics are the reasons why bullies persist on their bullying behaviours and don’t stop.

Basically they ignore both risks and consequences of their bullying behaviours and the fact that their conducts could be prosecutable.

By the way, the only certainty of cyberbullying is to have no certainty. On the contrary, traditional bullying happens predictably. Bullying has a specific bully; bullying is caused by a person or a group in the flesh.

Bullying exists in specific delimited spaces and it also happens in limited moments, as during lessons at schools or during sport training or in a public space every time the victim faces the bully.

Space as well as time is a certainty in bullying.

Bullying is an absolutely temporary event in the ordinary life, while its effects, expecially the psychological ones, are painfully permanent, as the bullying experience becomes crushing and devasting.

Due to its intrinsic predictability, every bullying event should be anticipated, foreseeable and preventable if only victims could stop silence.

Conversely, cyberbullying is totally permanent. It may happen at any time, in every single instant, whatever the moment of the online life.

Whatever the web access, as soon as the online connection works, cyberbullying enlivens its ghost.

Cyberbullying is never a temporary event of the online life: cyberbullying is an absolutely permanent event of the online life.

Being a victim of cyberbullying represents a continuous and lasting stigma in the online life.

Moreover, victimisation gets unstoppable as persistingn online bullying behaviors amplify the harassment itself through the web, thus resulting in a never ending online persecution.

And the stronger the bully, the weaker the victim, the heavier the victimisation.

Thus, the absence of any viable exit makes cyberbullying worse than bullying.

Whatever the means, either flaming or instant messaging, either impersonation or trickery, either exposure or cyberstalking, such permanent harassment provokes the same feelings and the same consequences over the victims, which are power imbalance, fear, isolation, and loss of esteem. Thus, silence prevails and wins.

Whatever the country, whatever the legislation, no matter the number of occurrences, it has become necessary to do something to stop such cycle of violence.

Several campaigns, protocols and agreements, shared among web platforms and social networks, have been disseminated through the web, resulting in a more raised awareness. They’ve also ruled behaviors and conducts both online and offline in order to possibly prevent and sanction bullies’ actions.

Nevertheless, there’s plenty of work still to come in order to help and assist victims in overcoming the lasting effects that the devastating tsunami of bullying is having on themselves from within.

Since bullying and cyberbullying let a stigma that cannot be ever completely removed.

To the loving memory of my father

The post Cyberbullying and Bullying: Why They Make Life Unliveable 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.

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