Background
The report to the Anti-bullying Alliance by Goldsmiths College, university of London (July 2006) found that:
- Between a fifth and a quarter of students had been cyber-bullied at least onceover the previous few months
- Phone calls, text messages and email were the most common
- There was more cyber-bullying outside school than in
- Girls are more likely than boys to be involved in cyber-bullying in school, usually byphone
- For boys, text messaging is the most usual form, followed by picture/video clip orwebsite bullying
- Picture/video clip and phone-call bullying were perceived as most harmful
- Website and text bullying were equated in impact to other forms of bullying
- Around a third of those bullied told no one about the bullying
MSM Cyber report on Blogging, Instant Messaging and Email (2007) found that:
- 11% of UK teenagers have experienced cyber-bullying
- 13% say that cyber-bullying is worse than physical bullying
- 74% did not go to anyone for advice when cyber-bullied
- Girls are twice as likely as boys to know someone who’s been cyber-bullied; 34% as opposed to 17%
- 48% of UK parents are unaware of cyber-bullying.
How to do it
Ask the Venturers to break into three groups, or more if you have a large number of participants. Each group should be issued with one of the stories.
The group should consider:
- how the victim feels about the bullying
- how they think the bullying should be tackled.
Having decided this, the group should develop a drama exploring the situation, how they decided to tackle it and what the outcome was. Time should be left for each group to present their drama to the other young people and to discuss whether the other young people would have tackled the situation in the same way as the group chose to.
Give out copies of the ‘how to protect Yourself’ activity sheet and briefly discuss.
© Children & Young People Now