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Combined push to stop cyber bullying

Posted on November 3, 2009, 8:08pm and updated on November 3, 2009 at 8:22 pm

Police, teachers, academics and education leaders will join forces next month in the hope of recruiting parents and the broader community to the cause of stamping out cyber bullying.

Education Department regional director Garry Costello hopes Mount Gambier City Hall will be packed for a community forum to educate parents about the capabilities of technology and how to protect children.

The forum is approaching as the Adelaide Supreme Court trial continues of a man and his son accused of killing Adelaide Hills schoolgirl Carly Ryan after allegedly setting up a fake online persona to lure her to a beach.

“That is the most horrific reminder to all of us how badly things can go wrong,” Mr Costello said.

He said the forum would go beyond cyberbullying to also focus on predator behaviour as concerns grew about the way people act on the internet, including online taunts and creation of alter-egos.

“We have seen with online behaviour, some people seem to think they have the liberty to be much more rude, aggressive and insulting than they ever would be to someone’s face,” he said.

Mr Costello said cyberbullying affected primary school children, but was more common in secondary schools, with material often based around broken romantic relationships.

However, he said although cyberbullying victims were often students, offences usually occurred away from schools, making the problem a broader concern for the entire community.

“Sadly it is a very significant issue in a whole range of ways — part of it is the 24-hour access nature of technology with mobile phones and some children have a lot of unsupervised access to the internet,” Mr Costello said.

“In many instances they are also worldly wise at getting things happening their parents are not aware of as they are part of a generation brought up with this technology and are more confident and competent with it than people their parents’ age.”

Mr Costello said the forum would allow parents to learn good practices to protect their children, such as web filtering, and storing unpleasant messages as evidence, through to ways to raise issues with children.

“It is seen as a school problem and is something schools need to engage in, but we need to try to get the community more broadly aware of issues and take community responsibility to dealing with it,” he said.

The forum will be held at Mount Gambier City Hall on Wednesday, November 18, at 7.30pm

Internet security expert Jody Melbourne and UniSA bullying specialist Dr Barbara Spears will be guest speakers.

A panel, including police and educators, will also answer questions.

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Comments

8 Responses to “Combined push to stop cyber bullying”

  1. Deanna Senn on February 19th, 2010 4:22 pm 1

    Article: Combined push to stop cyber bullying.

    Please contact me as I am wondering what is happening with cyber bullying as this is a continuous problem in our society especially on facebook and I have come across many groups on facebook in regards to bullying. including “christians aganist teen mothers” and once you get the group removed they just make another fake profile and make the group again with the same name.

    They are attacking teen mothers and do not worry how it is affecting them. They think teen mothers should be stoned alive and are nothing but whores.

    Facebook needs to realise they are becomming the largest place of bullying and need to filter such hate groups.

    There is even a group called “9/11 is still funny

    Many are trying to hide behind the first amendment and freedom of speech when many are from Australia. We seriously need some media input and awareness.

    Due th facebook been an American Company and their laws, Australia does not have any legislation towards this. Perhaps Australia needs to ban facebook from Australia like google did with China and Australia should have their own social networking site where people can have legal action taken aganist them if need be, or maybe instead of needing a mobile phone to verify your account you need to activate it with a credit card and the credit card can only be used per person or per household for those whose parents also use facebook, as this will stop people from making fake accounts and facebook will have credit card details to give to authorities if there is a brech.

  2. Maybe on February 22nd, 2010 11:03 am 2

    Ban facebook? Are you mental? You don’t see these groups unless you go looking for them. If any of your “friends” invite you to these groups, they aren’t your friends and shouldn’t be on your friends list. Ban friends that would send out those invites, and leave facebook for the rest of us that actually have common sense and don’t waste our time seeking out such ridiculous groups. Get over it.

  3. Pyrrho on February 22nd, 2010 12:18 pm 3

    How to deal with cyber-bullying.
    1. Approach computer.
    2. Locate modem power source.
    3. Incapacitate.

    If a mobile phone is the medium of transit for the offensive material, options include;
    1. Don’t issue one to anyone under 18.
    2. Block un-vetted numbers.

  4. James on February 22nd, 2010 7:17 pm 4

    I agree with deanna.

    #1 trolls go around looking for maximum impact. The find profiles steal pictures and create groups like I am (stolen pic person) and I will commit suicide if this group gets 1000 members.

    This needs to be stopped by Facebook. Groups with bad content racism/terrorism/hate groups should be filtered by Facebook.

    If you don’t think there is a problem you’re the one with mental issues!

    I work for an organisation trying to put a stop to cyber crime/ cyber bullying and it is a problem that is getting worse day by day.

  5. Deanna on February 22nd, 2010 7:23 pm 5

    These people are called “trolls” and also go around adding you as a friend with a fake profile of one of your friends and if you don’t add them they add your friends and find out information about you. It is not friends that are looking for these groups sending invites it is the trolls who create the groups doing it to find vulnerable people just for some fun.

    My husband’s profile was actually hacked by trolls who were using his profile to attack his friends and it took days for Facebook to close his profile down! So don’t you think Facebook needs to do something about this? And monitor these groups and pages of hate?

  6. Maybe on February 23rd, 2010 1:25 pm 6

    Yes, but you also should take your own responsibility and make sure your personal information is private. trolls can only access this stuff if you have it up there for them to get. Unless of course you’re hacked, but this is rare, and people should make sure they have an adequate password that contains a capital, numbers and letters, and is unique to facebook (ie not the same password you use for everything else).

    Facebook is a free service. It’s not their fault there are stupid people in the world.

    And whatever happened to teaching kids the old adage that sticks and stones might break their bones, but names could never hurt them?

    I dunno, sometimes I think people need to harden up. If you don’t like what you’re reading on the screen.…. don’t read it.

  7. Whatev's on February 23rd, 2010 6:49 pm 7

    Maybe: I think your suggestion for people to “harden up” is a crass statement.

    Technological converge allows for such a wide range of potential cyber attacks and when the effects can be so far reaching (eg. worldwide to anyone with web access) it’s simply not a matter of “sticks and stones”.

    Information on the web is basically accessible for everyone to see, for example numerous instances of students/teenagers having “hate sites” created about them can’t be dismissed as simply as a verbal exchange.

    Comparing cyber bullying and virtual attacks to abusive name calling is like comparing actual sticks and stones.

    Facebook needs to monitor content and where they fail, be held accountable.

    Besides personally I can’t stand Facebook, as Stephen Colbert once said “Facebook is a great way to find out what old friends are doing…and stop caring within the same 2 minutes”. Well, something like that.

  8. Maybe on February 24th, 2010 1:54 pm 8

    Steve Colbert is awesome.

    I get your point. I just don’t agree with it.

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