England’s schools ‘worst for cyber-bullying’

“Recently, the BBC News released an article, which informs about the OECD think tank (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) results on the experiences of more than 250,000 teachers in 48 industrialised countries and regions.  Among other information the think tank reports that England is facing an increase in the misuse of social media and cyber-bullying, particularly in the English schools.  The five-year study shows that the weekly online harassment reaches 14% in comparison to the international average (2%).  Moreover, the students that received unwanted online contact reached 27%, whereas the international average is only 3%.  The OECD education expert advised that there is a need for a reconsideration of the regulations that deal with the misuse of the social media in England.  The alarming report can be explained by the regular and excessive use of the electronic devices by young people in England.  

Recently, I concluded a study on school-bullying and cyber-bullying and the results showed that out of the 408 participants, 98.5% owned a mobile phone, 94.6% owned a laptop, and 53.6% a tablet, all with Internet access.  The users spent at least 6.40 hours per day online, exposing themselves to online violence, 76.8% had no regulation from their parents, with a minimum social media initiation age at birth.  Sometimes parents start online accounts for their children such as Facebook, which in this study was proven to be the most frequent cyber-bullying platform (74.2%), despite the fact that 84.7% of the users use Facebook just to talk to people.  In spite of the limited sample, 38.6% of the participants reported that they had been cyber-victimised at least once in their life, and more than 21% reported more than once, mostly by their classmates.  Rumours (49%) and threats (44.4%) prevailed, in most cases because of arguments in other settings (45.9%) or because of the victim’s looks (43.4%).  This project also revealed that the victimisation stopped because the victims stood up to the bullies (37%), with 21% of the victims fighting on their own without any support or guidance during the victimisation period.

Here, it needs to be pointed out that one of the main reasons that these cyber-bullying incidents occurred, is because of arguments in other settings, such as schools.  Young people seem to begin arguments at school and fuel these online after the school ends.  On the other hand, in some cases the victimisation incident starts online, which often leads to physical bullying at school in the form of revenge, if the victim knows the perpetrator.

Cyber-bullying is indeed rising fast in England and school-bullying victimisation rates are still high (60.7%).  Since there is a proven link between cyber-bullying and school-bullying, the government and the school need to re-evaluate the regulations and the anti-bullying policies, as well as increase the anti-bullying campaigns, which could lead to an increase of awareness and hopefully prevention of repetitive harassment.”