Schoolyard bullying often leads to cyber bullying

One in five young visitors to the Internet have been targets for cyber bullying. Virtual harassment reflects reality: very often schoolyard bullying continues over the Internet.
      "Schoolchildren continue communicating with their friends over the Internet after school", says Juuso Peura from the Mannerheim League for Child Welfare (MLL).
     
Young IRC-Galleria visitors report that they communicate over the Internet mainly with their friends. They visit such virtual communities as IRC-Galleria every day, which makes their communication very intensive. At the same time, it gives their bullies the forum and audience they need.
      Ordinary bullying is somewhat more common than Internet bullying. Nearly one in four schoolchildren says that they have experienced some form of harassment at school.
      A survey conducted by the Mannerheim League among nearly 20,000 young Net users in the spring of 2007 indicates that both cyber bullying and school harassment are very common phenomena.
     
Internet bullying has many features in common with ordinary bullying.
      "For example mocking remarks relating to a certain person’s words or looks can be circulated over the Internet", Peura reports.
      Cyber bullies are often guilty of vicious gossip and lies, while many website visitors are also offended by sexual comments and harassment.
     
Nevertheless, schoolchildren do not regard online bullying as being as unpleasant a phenomenon as school bullying. Some seven per cent of all respondents said that they had experienced old-fashioned school harassment.
      Three per cent of respondents reported that they were really suffering from online bullying. One reason for the low percentage could be that it is possible to overlook online messages.
      "Online rumours, gossip, and humiliation may be random, and they may be more easily handled than face-to-face messages", notes Peura.
      On the other hand, the Internet gives bullies an opportunity to invade the victims' privacy while they are at home.
     
In other cases, schoolchildren may begin bullying their teachers, as happened in Lieksa in Eastern Finland last spring. A schoolboy created a videoclip including an abusive text of his teacher and uploaded it to the Internet. The boy was sentenced to pay a fine of EUR 90 and monetary damages for defamation of his teacher. The defendant is appealing the case.
      One other example was of a boy who aggressively "photoshopped" or manipulated an image of his former girlfriend to make her look hideous, and then registered the girl, with all her personal details and this image, on a dating site.
     
Cruel messages can also be sent via a mobile phone. According to a survey conducted by Save the Children, a leading international organisation helping children around the world, bullying by mobile phone has increased by as much as 30 per cent from last year.
      Around 40 per cent of respondents reported that they had sometimes experienced mobile phone bullying. Girls are bullied more frequently than boys, while one in four victims has not said a word about bullying to anybody.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Pupil faces defamation charges for putting embarrassing video clip of teacher on YouTube (9.5.2007)
  Appeal submitted over Lieksa YouTube video defamation case (5.9.2007)

Links:
  Mannerheim League for Child Welfare
  IRC-Galleria (Wikipedia)