The enemy within

For many years, e-safety education in schools has focused on raising children's awareness of the 'stranger danger'. Campaigns dwelt on the dangers of talking to strangers, and since the age of the internet and mobile phones, the focus has been on warning children against sharing their photos or personal information with people they don't know. There has also been an emphasis on stamping out cyberbullying - the use of technology to invade a child's privacy, threaten, cajole or otherwise exert power over them. The use of videos in the so-called 'happy slapping' incidents in the UK was one of the first high profile incidences of cyberbullying, but as I have written in previous posts such as Textual Harassment, it can be much more insidious than that.

Now a new report written by a team of academics from the Institute of Education, London School of Ecoconomics, and King's College London, has thrown new light onto problems of cyberbullying. Entitled A qualitative study of children, young people and sexting, the report suggests that the biggest threat to e-safety comes from within. Professor Rosalind Gill, one of the authors of the report, said that whilst we have been concentrating on protecting children from contact with strangers online, we are losing sight of a new trend - peer pressure. "Our report suggests that the focus needs to shift to include the much more complicated issue of peer-to-peer communication and the difficulties and isolation young people experience in negotiating this," she said (source: BBC News).  The report shows that the worrying trend of 'sexting' - the sending and receiving of sexually explicit messages and images via mobile devices - seems to be something that children in school accept as a part of their daily life. Even more disturbingly the report features interviews with children as young as 8 years old who have been pressured by their classmates and others they know to take and send 'special images' of themselves. The executive summary offers seven key results from the study. 1) Threat comes mainly from peers 2) Sexting is often coercive 3) Girls are most adversely affected 4) Technology amplifies the problem 5) Sexting reveals wider sexual problems 6) Ever younger children affected 7) Sexting practices are culturally specific. 

The report summary also points out that the study, conducted in partnership with the NSPCC, was a small scale study with only 35 participants, and that caution is needed before any generalisations are made to larger populations of school children.

Image by Freefoto

The enemy within by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Zip it, Block it, Flag it

80% of children in the UK have encountered unsuitable or harmful content on the Internet (Byron, 2009 - see report link below) and it has usually been down to parents to educate their children about keeping safe on the web - that is until now.

'Zip it, Block it, Flag it' is the tag line for a new campaign introduced by the UK government, which will show primary school children (ages 5-11) how to avoid nasty content and risky conversations on social networking sites. Zip it - keep your personal stuff private and think about what you say and do online. Block it - Block people who send nasty messages and don't open unknown links and attachments. Flag it - Flag up with someone you trust if anything upsets you or if someone asks to meet you offline. The campaign is being supported by all the major players, including Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Myspace. CEOP - the UK Government's child protection agency who are also involved, recently criticised the social networking services for what it perceived as their lack of action over cyberbullying and other forms of internet risk. They may be slightly uncomfortable partners.

Although e-safety will not be delivered in formal online safety classes, the key messages will be integrated into all other subjects across the curriculum. This means that primary school teachers will now have to become more expert in their knowledge of social networking, instant messaging and other new technologies and will need to be a little more savvy about how kids use them. Whether teachers will have the time or the space to squeeze more content into an already overburdened National Curriculum remains to be seen. We shall see whether this campaign is a success over the long term, or whether it goes to the wall like so many other UK Government schemes, but on the surface, this approach should be welcomed by parents and teachers alike. It's just a pity it wasn't introduced sooner.

Related Articles

Online safety push for 5 year-olds (BBC News)

Code for online safety (The Guardian)

Schools to give lessons in internet safety (PC Advisor)

Green Cross Code for the Internet (The Telegraph)

Safer Children in a Digital World (Report by Dr Tanya Byron)

Brown launches Net Code for children (The Register)

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Textual harassment

I was interviewed recently on the back of a blog post I wrote on cyberbullying entitled Bully 4 U and the straw poll survey I conducted. The Evening Herald, a newspaper based in South West England features my interview in an article entitled: 'Tormentors who use technology'. Here's my full interview with commentary by reporter Cherie Gordon:

The traditional figure of the playground bully is a well-known sight for countless children. Over the past few years, however, a new type of bully has left the school corridors and entered the World Wide Web. Family computers have been hacked into by cyber bullies who attack their victims not face to face, but via internet chatrooms, network sites and online messaging.

"Bullying of any kind is destructive and can ruin lives, but cyber bullying may be the most insidious form," said Steve Wheeler, a senior lecturer in education and ICT. "Children can escape from the school playground bully, but they find it harder to escape from the bully who invades their home, their desktop, their mind. Cyber bullying isn't going to replace traditional bullying; it will take it to a whole new dimension."

Musing about the emergence of the cyber trend on his online blog, Mr Wheeler reports the findings of a poll he carried out, questioning other childcare professionals on the issues surrounding bullying.

"On my blog I was talking about keeping children safe on the internet," said the 52-year-old. "I asked what people thought the greatest danger for children was on social networking sites like Bebo and Facebook. There were several options to choose from including cyber bullying. The majority of those who answered – 36 per cent – thought cyber bullying was going to be the most obvious threat. It is very interesting that for over one in three it is the most important."

Bullying has always been a curse for some youngsters but now, with the internet's ability to reach into a victim's home, at any time, adults are also becoming targets. "I haven't had any experience of cyber bullying myself but I know colleagues who have," said Mr Wheeler. "I know of situations where people's careers have been virtually destroyed by it. I heard of a situation recently about a teacher in a school who experienced this. He was very respected and worked in a secondary school and the police came to arrest him. He said, 'What's the problem?' and they said two of his female colleagues claimed that he'd been sending them text messages asking them to sit in front of a webcam and take their clothes off. It emerged that two of the lads in his class had hijacked his SMS and sent these messages, just because they didn't like him. You can imagine the shock and horror and bad feelings in the staff room, even though he was innocent. Reputations can be damaged. It's quite insidious because it's anonymous."

Read more online here.

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Bully 4 U

In a post earlier this month called 'Dangerous Liaisons' I posed the question: What is the greatest danger for children using social networking services? 160 people responded to this question, and a pie chart of the results can be seen on the original post. It clearly shows that over a third of all those responding (36%) thought that cyberbullying was the biggest threat. Only 22% thought that paedophiles were a threat, with invasion of privacy (16%) the third highest concern.

Yes, I know that this was a simplistic survey, and I acknowledge that the question could have been better presented. But I did it because I am genuinely interested in e-safety and I wanted to provoke some kind of response to gauge whether others were as equally concerned. Judging by your responses, people are very concerned, some with the dangers children face when using social networks unthinkingly or without full awareness of the persistence of the medium. Others were more concerned about getting the semantics correct. Some thought that the problem was too complex to be addressed as a single problem. We need to acknowledge that there are problems when we use social networking tools. There are many questions. Do we behave differently when we use Facebook or Myspace? Do we reveal too much personal information? What do we do about the dangers children (our childen) face when they use social networks? (and they will - there is no stopping them despite school bans).

Yet the most interesting outcome of the survey was that cyberbullying emerged as the biggest concern. Bullying of any kind is destructive and can ruin lives, but cyberbullying may be the most insidious form. The pseudo-anonymity of the perpetrator is disturbing in itself, but cyberbullying is often very intrusive too. Children can escape from the school playground bully, but they find it harder to escape from the Facebook bully who invades their home, their desktop, their mind. Similar problems have emerged with mobile phones. Cyberbullying it seems, can affect almost anyone. What are your experiences with cyberbullying? Have your children or students been bullied through text? How did you handle it? Who can offer advice on how to address the problem of the cyberbully?

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One bad apple

When the Israelites went into battle against the men of Ai, they were soundly defeated. It was a shock for them. They weren't in the habit of losing. The whole nation became discouraged, and their 'hearts melted and became like water'. They remind me of a first rate Barcelona soccer team, so confident and fired up for victory, who are then defeated 0-3 in their own splendid Camp Nou stadium, by a supposedly second rate team of no-hopers (insert your least favourite team here). The Israelites couldn't believe they had been given such a kicking, after enjoying so many other famous victories against all the odds. Then they discovered that one of their soldiers, a fella called Achan, had disobeyed orders and had stolen a whole shedload of silver and gold which should have belonged to the people. Because Achan had disobeyed God, the entire Israelite army had been collectively punished. After this little local problem had been 'dealt with', the Israelites went back for the return match, and beat seven shades out of the Ai first team. The whole story is found in the Bible, in Joshua, Chapter 7.

This story reminds me of the problems surrounding mobile phones and social networking services, and how so many schools have banned their use during school hours. These are inherently neutral tools which can be used for good or bad. Because there have been some isolated incidences of abuse, such as cyberbullying, most schools have banned these tools outright. There are good arguments for this approach of course, including duty of care and the need to protect vulnerable individuals. Yet many are now questioning such a blanket ban on these tools in schools. Children still use their mobile phones anyway, regardless of the ban. They just do it secretly, like smoking a crafty cigarette behind the bike sheds. They also use the websites that have been banned on school premises when they go home. The threat still exists, but outside of the remit of the school. So should schools continue their bans, or should they begin to reintroduce access to social networks on school premises, where the environment is a lot more controlled than at home, and educate children into safer use? Should schools now begin to tap into the tremendous liberating potential of mobile phones to promote better pedagogy, whilst showing children that they can be a positive thing, not something that should be disallowed?

I remember when I was in school that if one student misbehaved but remained unidentified, the teacher would punish the entire class. We all suffered because of the bad behaviour of one individual, just like the Israelites paid a stiff price because of the sins of Achan.

I wondering if the same thing is happening in schools today. I'm just asking. Are we in danger of placing negative connotations onto mobile phones and social networking services, so that children only think of them as illicit, or something that is divorced from learning? Are we storing up trouble for the future, whilst we deprive children the opportunity to explore learning using new tools? Here's my key question: Is the blanket ban the real bad apple in the bunch? The Osmonds and The Jacksons both sang 'One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch'. Well it will if it's left there long enough.

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Dangerous liaisons?

Keeping children safe on the Internet is an increasing concern for parents and teachers alike. Sites such as CEOP's Think You Know have become useful resources to raise children's awareness of the dangers of using social networking tools such as Bebo and Myspace. Yet media reports continue to highlight a number of concerns about how children use social networking services and whilst schools continue to block access to a number of sites, the question is: How can teachers train/educate children to understand Internet safety in authentic contexts?

I created a poll below, because I was interested in finding out what people thought was the biggest threat to children who use social networks. The poll was open for a week, and 160 people voted. I will post an analysis of the results on this blog later, and hopefully engage us all in a discussion about what schools can do to improve children's understanding of how to keep safe while enjoying use of the web. One of the questions already posed by @simfin (Simon Finch) is what should be our priorities for children's safe use of social networks in the future? Many thanks to all those who voted and made comments!

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Cyber Bullying

I remember that during my school years, bullies were less than subtle. They either 'rolled you' in the playground, or perpetrated terrible acts upon you in the toilets - I had my head held under in a full sink of water on one occasion, and some of my mates were less fortunate. It was a rite of passage, and prepared me for the much more subtle bullying I would experience later in work, particularly with insecure bosses or inadequate and threatened senior colleagues in some of my previous jobs. But it cannot be condoned of course. Bullying should be loathed in any sector of society, and when my own kids are bullied, I take it very personally.

It was with great interest then, that I came across an article in the Independent Newspaper today, with the title: 'Teachers fear growing cyberbullying by pupils'. There's a worrying trend for pupils to take digital pictures of their teachers and post them with derogatory comments and/or obscene images to sites such as RateMyTeachers and YouTube. A survey of teachers showed that one in six had been a victim of cyberbullying by one of their pupils. Of these, 45 per cent had received e-mails written to upset them, 12 per cent had received photographs which made them feel threatened, embarrassed or vulnerable, and 10 per cent had read a message about themselves on an internet chatroom. The report doesn't say what proportion of these were male or female, but we can guess can't we?

Teachers are now threatening to take legal action against websites that host this kind of material. Oh, the times, they are a-changing....