Cyber intimidation and the art of bullying
Even if the police are not called in, schools are under increasing
pressure to deal with bullying in all its forms.
Photo: Simon O'Dwyer
If 16-year-old Jessica Jones had received a black eye in a playground punch-up, her former school would have been forced to deal with the attacker. But when the North Coast schoolgirl received a text message from a schoolmate abusing and threatening to hurt her, she was told she just had to learn to live with it.
Jones says that when she showed the text message to school administrators she expected something to be done but, she alleges, her complaint was shrugged off. "I was told, 'You should expect this sort of thing all your life because you're a pretty blonde girl,"' she says. "I was shocked that the school just wanted to hush it up."
Jones has since moved schools but has decided that harassment and name-calling is not something she is willing to live with. She found the unwanted text messages, just one of the myriad acts now called "cyber bullying", quite devastating.
"When I received the message I felt completely shocked," Jones says. "I became very reclusive and depressed because I was trying to understand what had prompted it. It was also very scary because I thought I was going to be physically hurt. I knew the girl who sent the message had done things to harm herself and I thought she might hurt me as well."
Cyber bullying is a relatively new type of harassment but the Federal Government's NetAlert service (www.netalert.gov.au) says it is not unusual. According to 2007 statistics on the NetAlert site, 16 per cent of children say they have been bullied online and 14 per cent have been bullied using a mobile phone.
Worse still, cyber intimidation pushes the frontiers of bullying - it can take place any time, anywhere. This has led to a broadening of the definition of bullying. The Australian school communities' Bullying. No Way! website (www.bullyingnoway.com.au) describes it as "any offensive or aggressive behaviour directed at another person, repeated over time. It may be physical, emotional or social."
"One of the things I found so upsetting was that after I had been bullied, home was no longer a refuge," Jones says. "You can be at home or at the shops, anywhere really, and be getting threatening messages. You don't know where the bully might be so you don't know if you're in danger. You really have no idea what's happening."
Cyber bullying takes many forms. Some bullies prefer threatening text messages. Others use email. Instant messaging, internet chat rooms and social networking sites such as MySpace are prime breeding grounds for exclusion, teasing, abuse and threats.
Some bullies even set up websites designed to ridicule their victims.
The corporate affairs manager of the government's Netalert body, Rod Nockles, has spoken of a site that targeted a teenage girl in Queensland and allowed users to post photos and comments.
Worryingly, cyber bullying is not replacing playground bullying - it seems to be a new phenomenon perpetrated by different people.
Melanie Epstein, who is involved in the first national study of cyber bullying at the Child Health Promotion Research Centre at Edith Cowan University, says anonymity is at the core of cyber bullying behaviour.
"Our preliminary research shows that students who bully online are not the same children who bully face-to-face," Epstein says. "It's anonymity that is the key to it - they don't think they're going to get caught."
But punishment is not the only thing cyber bullies can avoid. Wounding someone from a distance means the bully does not have to face the hurt they have caused and may not recognise how damaging their behaviour can be.
Dr Simon Crisp, a clinical adolescent psychologist at Melbourne's Monash University, says increasing use of electronic communication means some young people do not realise the impact of their own actions.
"Electronic communication is very different from face-to-face interaction," Crisp says. "With electronic communication, personal responsibility is diminished, so antisocial things can occur."
Crisp says increasing numbers of young people spend so much time communicating electronically that they can sometimes have trouble forming intimate relationships in the "real world". Bullying is just one manifestation of that behaviour.
In some cases, however, it is the notoriety that goes with inflicting pain that motivates bullies. In recent months there have been several incidents of violent bullying videos being posted on sites such as YouTube and attracting huge audiences.
Last June, mobile phone footage of a fight between girls from Victoria's Copperfield College attracted media attention and horrified reactions from politicians and school administrators. The video showed one girl pinning another to the ground and beating her about the head. The internet audience appears to have lapped it up.
A few days later students from the exclusive Brisbane Grammar School were punished for participating in a vicious fight outside of the school grounds (but in school uniform), which was filmed by mobile phone and posted on YouTube.
In both cases the perpetrators were easily identifiable. So why post footage of fights when it can lead to punishment or prosecution?
"For some young people it's about notoriety and status within the group," Crisp says. "It's exciting to be involved with this type of public activity, knowing that people will talk about you. However, the trap is that while it can create a reputation, the very same actions also have the potential to destroy a reputation."
New forms of bullying require new approaches to dealing with the problem. Rather than learning to live with text message abuse, Jessica Jones decided to take action. She took the matter to Coffs Harbour police who responded immediately and the bullying stopped. But she still felt she had to move schools. The experience prompted Jones to start a campaign in local media to raise awareness of the problem of cyber bullying in all its forms.
"Once I started talking about it I was astounded by the number of people it had happened to," she says. "It's really amazing how many people are affected by it. Victims often don't tell anyone, they think it's embarrassing or are too upset to talk about it."
This can lead to a problem for parents who may not even be aware that their child is suffering. If a kid comes home from school with a split lip, there's no way of hiding it, but victims of cyber abuse can suffer alone and in silence. Also, the nature of cyber bullying means many parents may not be aware that their children are bullying others.
Crisp advises parents to get involved with the technology so they have a greater understanding of how their children are using it. "Maintaining communication and dialogue about what the child is doing is extremely important," he says. "The worst thing a parent can do is to reject the technology because that will just close down the lines of communication. Talking about how your kids use technology should be an everyday sort of conversation."
Many experts advise setting limits on technology use and moving computers out of bedrooms and into the family space. Crisp emphasises that time spent in cyber space is a public, not a private activity and parents should recognise that.
"Parents are right to respect their children's privacy," he says.
"But there is a big difference between writing in a diary and spending time online. Anything your child is doing on the internet is a public activity and you should treat it as a public activity."
Jones has some advice for victims of cyber bullying.
"Talk to someone you trust about the problem," she says. "Tell the school, tell your parents or tell the police. Make sure it's someone who's going to do something about it.
"Second, don't engage with it. Keep the messages to prove what's happened but don't respond. That will only make the problem worse.
"Third, don't accept that it's your fault. Cyber bullying is a crime and you don't have to accept it."
What's the law doing about it?
The internet is often portrayed as a lawless frontier, given the struggle by authorities to make and apply laws sensibly to ever-changing technologies.
It's comforting to know, then, that in the case of cyber bullying, laws are in place to deal with the problem. Most websites such as Facebook or MySpace have a grievance procedure to deal with offensive material, getting it off the web quickly before the law has to step in.
The Commonwealth Criminal Code makes it a crime to use the telecommunications system (which includes the internet or the telephone) to "menace, harass or cause offence". Breaching that section of the code carries a prison term of up to three years.
Most cyber bullying behaviour would fall foul of this legislation. In order to make a conviction, the courts have only to decide that the bullying behaviour amounts to what a reasonable person would find menacing, harassing or offensive.
Even if the police are not called in, schools are under increasing pressure to deal with bullying in all its forms.
In May the NSW Supreme Court awarded 18-year-old Benjamin Cox more than $200,000 plus a lifetime's wages, as compensation for the mental illness he suffered after being physically bullied in kindergarten, which left him unable to socialise or work. Cyber bullying may be a new frontier of abuse but the law is primed to deal with the phenomenon.