Suggestion to counter cyber Bullying

Prodigious

Note to mods: Hadn't a clue where to put this, feel free to move it.

Alright, no need for a long introduction. We all know how serious it's getting. As a strong character myself, I find it incredible that people are so affected by it, it's not difficult to block someone's number or Facebook. Anyway, obviously its happening.

System to counter bullying by texts in schools

I'm trying to break this down into simplest form. Hypothetical situation.
Department of Education set up a central phone number (12345) All schools are enrolled to this new program. The schools record the phone numbers of the students.

Bob, who is a 2nd year student, receives a threatening message. He feels intimidated, and has seen posters around the school, so he forwards the text to 12345, as his teacher told them too.

Now the department of education get a text from 0891234567. This is pinged against each school's database, and it bounces back from all except St.Nicholas Secondary School in Meath, meaning Bob is in that school.

The school receives a notification from the D.o.E's system saying a student received a threatening message, attaching the message itself and the name of the student. A teacher approaches the student and deals with the situation.

Pros:
- It is less intimidating for the student, they do not have to approach the teacher.
- Not too difficult to implement, most schools have already similar systems for texting parents etc.

Cons:
- Students will be unwilling to give their numbers.
- Possibility that teachers will be too lazy to deal with notifications.

Procrastastudy

I don't understand what any of the above achieves that a confidential help line and a call to the network does not.

On a wider point people need to be taught, from an early stage, that if something wrong is being done they need to stand up and report it. There is far too much of this anonymous reporting available IMHO. It just aids people who want to bully people. There is a reason why a fundamental part of our justice system is we get the opportunity to face our accusers.

There are various threads which seem to form an anecdotal pattern:

People don't feel it's their civic duty to be witnesses in court cases
People don't feel they should have to face the people they accuse
People feel they shouldn't deal with the other party informally in the first instance
People seem to be of the opinion that they aren't complicit in a wrong they're aware of but don't report.

Bullying is a terrible thing, there are however very simple solutions that get repeatedly overlooked due to apathy in many cases.

Prodigious

Procrastastudy wrote: »

I don't understand what any of the above achieves that a confidential help line and a call to the network does not.

A texting system makes it extremely easy and quick for a person to offload the worry and stress. Many victims of bullying would not have the courage to make a call, whereas a text is an easier option. It also involves the school network, in a way that an anonymous help line cannot. It leads to a step towards the bullying stopping, whereas call centres can only offer advice/listening friend.

Procrastastudy

Methememb wrote: »

A texting system makes it extremely easy and quick for a person to offload the worry and stress. Many victims of bullying would not have the courage to make a call, whereas a text is an easier option. It also involves the school network, in a way that an anonymous help line cannot. It leads to a step towards the bullying stopping, whereas call centres can only offer advice/listening friend.

Seems very open to abuse - I'm not sure how an unsubstantiated text can lead to anything being properly investigated and dealt with.

Prodigious

Procrastastudy wrote: »

Seems very open to abuse - I'm not sure how an unsubstantiated text can lead to anything being properly investigated and dealt with.

Maybe I haven't posted it clearly.

Basically when the text comes through, the school is notified who sent the text. The teacher then approaches the student and assesses the situation.

Procrastastudy

Methememb wrote: »

Maybe I haven't posted it clearly.

Basically when the text comes through, the school is notified who sent the text. The teacher then approaches the student and assesses the situation.

So kid who didn't want to speak to anyone drectly is sending a text to something so someone can approach him directly? Yep I'm definately confused now sorry.

Okay enough of me picking holes. Lets have an actual conversation.

The biggest issue surrounding cyber bullying isnt texting it's social media. What needs to change is parents and the law. If a child is being bullied on Facebook et al. the gardai should be empowered to act in approaching the parents of the offenders and telling them to stop.

Failure by the parents to stop the kid from continuing should result in a fine. The UK community police officer is allowed and encourged to act informally in such matters - the Irish policeforce has always been more stand-offish that they are in the UK - its a cultural thing, however in this they need to be allowed to act.

That's not to say that parents shouldnt be dealing with this informally in the first instance. While no blame should be put on the bullied, what are the parents of these childreen doing in not supervising their internet use and simply deleting their accounts if the bullying gets to the stage it does with some?

Prodigious

Procrastastudy wrote: »

So kid who didn't want to speak to anyone drectly is sending a text to something so someone can approach him directly? Yep I'm definately confused now sorry.

Okay enough of me picking holes. Lets have an actual conversation.

Yes, a text is a hell of a lot easier than a call. Maybe you'd understand if you were in that position.

Jogathon

The trouble is that cyber bullying occurs outside of the school environs and as such the teachers have no power. Now, most will try to deal with it as best they can but its a huge grey area.

Also, can you imagine how the parents would react to the gross invasion of their child's privacy? I'd put in a roll eyes here if I could see the button.

Prodigious

Jogathon wrote: »

The trouble is that cyber bullying occurs outside of the school environs and as such the teachers have no power. Now, most will try to deal with it as best they can but its a huge grey area.

Also, can you imagine how the parents would react to the gross invasion of their child's privacy? I'd put in a roll eyes here if I could see the button.

Ah, but where is the invasion of privacy really? Its the child choosing to send the text. The school already has every student's pps, address, d.o.b, etc.

PaulieC

You could teach kids to cope. After all, bullying is not a new phenomenon, but it is the kid's reaction to the bullying that has changed. IMO, it is the kid's inability to cope with what is mostly banter that has changed, due to them being mollycoddled and not learning any life skills.
I think that all the suggestions mooted so far just go to further the mollycoddling of the 'victim'. Whatever happened to standing up to bullies ?

Prodigious

True that. I have the same outlook now that they're discussing "dealing with" people posting on the internet, in light of recent events. Its like having a child that cries every time you give out to him. You can choose to stop anyone from giving out to him, or you can teach him to toughen up and deal with it. It needs to start now though.

juan.kerr

The proposed solution architecture needs some further thought.

This is pinged against each school's database, and it bounces back from all except St.Nicholas Secondary School in Meath, meaning Bob is in that school.

Prodigious

juan.kerr wrote: »

The proposed solution architecture needs some further thought.

In what manner? Obviously its a hypothetical system, but I'd imagine its quite effective in that it would be an md5 hash being crosslisted against the schools, rather than the phone number. That way the central text system does not hold the phone numbers of students around the country.

Solair

I think the main thing is to provide kids with a forum in school to discuss this stuff. I think it's very easy for a kid (or some adults) to think that it only happens to them and to try to deal with it entirely on their own.

In any group, most people will be quite supportive of the victim of bullying and often peer pressure will counteract the bullies too. It's very important that the situation gets dealt with openly.

Some people can be totally overwhelmed by dealing with a situation like this on their own if they think it's unique to them or are embarrassed by it.

It could be important for a teacher or someone else to discuss past cases to open up the debate.

Also I'm not sure that teachers are equipped to deal with this they're neither social networking specialists, most of them being average middle aged people some of whom may never have even used social networking in a serious way nor are they psychological experts.

They need to be able to call on an individual who can solve the online elements of the issue by closing down privacy settings, blocking people, reporting people etc etc and on psychological help too!

I think social networking service providers also need to be prepared to enforce their T&Cs too though. It's almost invariably a breech of contract to engage in bullying or harassment on most sites and you should just face being booted off, your profile etc delete. A lot of sites seem a bit too slow to react to complaints.

Prodigious

Solair wrote: »

I think the main thing is to provide kids with a forum in school to discuss this stuff. I think it's very easy for a kid (or some adults) to think that it only happens to them and to try to deal with it entirely on their own.

A forum online or in school? From a students perspective, why would they bother going onto it?

A mini-facebook network would work quite well. In fact if each school actually set up a group on Facebook, where students could discuss topics and chat freely, it could be a very positive initiative . +1

Solair

Maybe online and for real in school too.
Preferably with some expert support available too, at least enough to be able to deal with the technical issues of securing the bullying victims against further attack by advising on privacy settings, blocking and reporting.

That expert could be online.

Perhaps a few Skype tutorials online to groups of classrooms too.?

Prodigious

Or even (shudder) Google Plus for hangouts... Creates a group spirit among the classes, friendly environment. As well as that, more shy people might open up if they felt more involved in this manner. People who never would have talked before would be talking and could form great friendships.

Of course this is all ideal world scenarios. A few problems I see:
- Little ****s who ruin it for everyone by being negative, spamming, stuff like that
- Teachers who are to incompetent and/or lazy to introduce the idea to the class
- Someone who does not have internet access may feel left out.

juan.kerr

Methememb wrote: »

In what manner? Obviously its a hypothetical system, but I'd imagine its quite effective in that it would be an md5 hash being crosslisted against the schools, rather than the phone number. That way the central text system does not hold the phone numbers of students around the country.

For a start, why would each school have it's own database? Secondly where do the school databases reside. In the schools or in a central location? Exponentially more expensive if a server is required in each school in the country. (Hardware, deployment, maintenance, electricity, backups etc).

Why not have a single central database that can be queried by Phone Number (properly stored to ensure there are no issues with exact matching). The record has foreign keys to the Student Profile and the School Profile records.

A key issue here would be Data Protection issues - you'd need to ensure that the records are up to date for example if student changes phone number or leaves school.

Is it opt in or are students forced to participate? Do you need parents permission or how would this be forced through?

Would the phone number of the original malicious message sender be used to trace the sender? Are there Data Protection issues with this? what of the original sender blocks his / her number?

Plus it only covers one simple scenario.

Prodigious

juan.kerr wrote: »

For a start, why would each school have it's own database? Secondly where do the school databases reside. In the schools or in a central location? Exponentially more expensive if a server is required in each school in the country. (Hardware, deployment, maintenance, electricity, backups etc).

Why not have a single central database that can be queried by Phone Number (properly stored to ensure there are no issues with exact matching). The record has foreign keys to the Student Profile and the School Profile records.

A key issue here would be Data Protection issues - you'd need to ensure that the records are up to date for example if student changes phone number or leaves school.

Is it opt in or are students forced to participate? Do you need parents permission or how would this be forced through?

Would the phone number of the original malicious message sender be used to trace the sender? Are there Data Protection issues with this? what of the original sender blocks his / her number?

Plus it only covers one simple scenario.

All of the VEC schools already have servers for facilities such as e portal

- If it was opt in only it would not work.

- Not sure about the data protection, which is why Im putting it out there for everyone to see, if anyone can advise in this area?

Solair

Tracing and finding the originator of text message attacks or malicious calls is relatively simple. If the phone is registered you have a name and address and the Gardai can pay a visit to the door.

If it's unregistered, you could just get a Garda to ring it back and give the owner a severe telling off.

Blocking your number only instructs the network not to display it. It's still sent and the call details are recorded in the billing system. You're never anonymous to the phone system itself only to the person answering!

For serious issues like death threats or threats of violence etc, you can triangulate the signal and catch the person making the call or sending the text.

Online bullying and threats are much more difficult to trace. The best thing you can do is advise kids never to interact with anonymous users. Just block them by default. On Facebook etc most users are clearly identifiable. It's more am issue where kids are on totally anonymous services. If they are insisting on using those, they should also never ever identify themselves either!

Simple, practical steps could avoid a lot of this stuff.

A lot of it is about how people react too. You have to know there's support and remain calm.

I've seen cases where people have received horrible stuff by post too! So, it's not just an online thing. The 'poison pen' letter has been with us for a very long time. The Internet just made it easier to send!

I've worked in media outlets and regularly dealt with threatening letters, calls and even face to face threats at public events from psychos!

Sadly there are a small % of very odd characters our there. You just have to learn to deal with them.

Average people are stepping into a nasty scenario that in the past was really only experienced by people in the public eye.

We need to educate people about how to deal with it!

The Internet is sort of beyond the reach of local laws though. I think all these calls for legislation will be meaningless/pointless as in most cases you're dealing with networks hosted abroad.

All we can do is become more aware of how to deal with it.

amen

I just don't get these posts re cyber bullying. You can't stop it and never will.

What you need to do is teach people how to respond and deal with those bullying them.

I can't find any statistics but my gut feeling is that most bullying is offline in the real world and involves people bullying in school, on the street etc.

The cyber bullying is just a continuation of the physical bullying.

We need to teach respect for each other and also to report incidents.

As for the teaching respect that needs to start at home with some continuation in school/sports clubs etc.

Manach

Given the cutbacks and lack of resources for the Guards, it would be unlikely tracing back text messages (ignoring any issue for the moment of data privacy). Using State resources to deal with such minor social can lead to complete overreaction - eg in the US police arresting 5YO for behaviour in the classroom. A solution would be the re-engagement of Parents in the upbringing of their children instead of the prevalence of State rules and expert agencies leading the way.

Prodigious

Manach wrote: »

Given the cutbacks and lack of resources for the Guards, it would be unlikely tracing back text messages (ignoring any issue for the moment of data privacy). Using State resources to deal with such minor social can lead to complete overreaction - eg in the US police arresting 5YO for behaviour in the classroom. A solution would be the re-engagement of Parents in the upbringing of their children instead of the prevalence of State rules and expert agencies leading the way.

There's nothing minor about 3 suicides of people under 15 years of age in 2 months

Procrastastudy

Methememb wrote: »

There's nothing minor about 3 suicides of people under 15 years of age in 2 months

I'm pretty sure there were quite a few more not related to cyber bullying. The issue is just in vogue at the moment.

Whats needed is legislation giveing power to the Gardai and better supervision by parents not some IT white elephant.

Procrastastudy

Methememb wrote: »

Yes, a text is a hell of a lot easier than a call. Maybe you'd understand if you were in that position.

I was bullied at school before the mobile phone was invented. I was taught to deal with it by aproaching my parents and teachers who made it possible for me to do that by fostering the relevant culture.

If I could have turned off the machine that the bullying was coming from I would have done - even at the age of ten or so. There's a culture shift needed, thats hard, thats why it will take years to happen. Anything else is window dressing.

whelan1

cambo_gueno wrote: »

You could teach kids to cope. After all, bullying is not a new phenomenon, but it is the kid's reaction to the bullying that has changed. IMO, it is the kid's inability to cope with what is mostly banter that has changed, due to them being mollycoddled and not learning any life skills.
I think that all the suggestions mooted so far just go to further the mollycoddling of the 'victim'. Whatever happened to standing up to bullies ?

my son who is 11 has been bullied for years his problem is he needs to toughen up. But there is also the problem of a total lack of discipline on the bullies parents side. why should my lad have to grin and bear it while this lad can do what he wants. My lad is now going to a counsellor as he was told no one liked him and he would b better off dead

Testify

whelan1 wrote: »

my son who is 11 has been bullied for years his problem is he needs to toughen up. But there is also the problem of a total lack of discipline on the bullies parents side. why should my lad have to grin and bear it while this lad can do what he wants. My lad is now going to a counsellor as he was told no one liked him and he would b better off dead

One of you ( victims parents) need to give the bully a good bateing

KT10

cambo_gueno wrote: »

You could teach kids to cope. After all, bullying is not a new phenomenon, but it is the kid's reaction to the bullying that has changed. IMO, it is the kid's inability to cope with what is mostly banter that has changed, due to them being mollycoddled and not learning any life skills.
I think that all the suggestions mooted so far just go to further the mollycoddling of the 'victim'. Whatever happened to standing up to bullies ?

This. Bullying is not a new problem, just the methods have changed and as per my time in school, both the schools and the Gardai are woefully unequipped to deal with it.

Solair wrote: »

Tracing and finding the originator of text message attacks or malicious calls is relatively simple. If the phone is registered you have a name and address and the Gardai can pay a visit to the door.

If it's unregistered, you could just get a Garda to ring it back and give the owner a severe telling off.

If you were a bully using an unregistered phone and got a call from a Garda to give you a severe telling off, do you think you'd take it seriously or rip the piss completely?

What are they going to do? Tri-angulate your position and send in the ERU?

The root problem in all of this is kids leaving themselves open to abuse, FB as it stands can be locked down so you can't receive messages from people you don't know, you can still leave yourself searchable, but remove the option for non-friends to post on your wall or message you, hell, you can even remove the option for people to be able to add you as a friends so only you can add people.

I realise not eveywhere works like FB, but my point is we don't need new systems to deal with this issue, we need to educate kids how to effectively use this utterly incredible piece of technology that is social media and that includes protecting themselves.

whelan1

Testify wrote: »

One of you ( victims parents) need to give the bully a good bateing

am sorely tempted:cool: other issue is there is a 9month waiting list for counselling for jids in our area. We have to go private at 50 a pip. am tempted to send the final bill to the bullies parents:cool:

jimmycrackcorm

I attended a talk by a guy from Barnardos who told us of a teacher in a school that had implemented what sounds like a great system. Every Friday each pupil was given an envelope with a page listing some questions: Are you being buillied by anyone and have you seen someone being bullied and by who AFAIR.

Everyone had to place the envelope in a box on Monday (compulsory but anonymous) even if nothing was written. The results were collated and it seemed to work as Bullies were identified and dealt with.

Jogathon

Methememb wrote: »

Ah, but where is the invasion of privacy really? Its the child choosing to send the text. The school already has every student's pps, address, d.o.b, etc.

Yes, but schools are not allowed to share that information with any outside agency without the express written permission of both parents. Schools also do not have childrens' mobile numbers, but have the parents contact details. This would be an outside agency and I can't imagine parents allowing their child's number to be known to the school, and definitely not to an outside agency.