The "Social Media " Threat !

The age of the computer - and it's companion - the Internet was supposed to usher in a new era of communication and enhance the benefits of knowledge.   The development of the "search engine " opened a new world with the promise that enquiring juvenile minds would have the boredom of school days banished.

What has emerged is a spate of cyber bullying  that involves Principals and teaching staff in the loss of valuable teaching time as they try and mitigate the damage.   The distress is causing some students to abandon school - and there have been cases of child suicide.  This is a situation fast spinning out of control.

The emerging statistics reveal a growing problem - and the majority of victims are girls.  Last year the number of incidents in Australia that resulted in an official complaint reached 463,000 - and these were in the 8-17 age group.   Breaking down those numbers even further, 365,000 involved children aged between 10 and 15.

That is not a pretty picture.  It seems that spite and character assassination are rife against girls between 10 and 15 and many are subjected to what can only be called a vendetta by their classmates.These cyber attacks are aimed at their appearance, life style, choice of clothes - and in many cases question their  morality and sexual behaviour.    It comes at a critical time, when many are experiencing the stress and change of puberty.

The answer suggested by well meaning pundits is to simply shut down the computer and ignore this bullying, but that is not so simple.  Cyber bullying involves both direct emails containing threats - and damaging content spread across the vast spectrum of social media - for all to see and comment on.  For most, they are impossible to ignore.

Many teachers are finding that they are becoming virtual "Agony Aunts " trying to steer vulnerable children out of this cyber morass.  It is distressing and time consuming, and brings them into conflict with the vast array of ethnicity, differences of language and religion - and protocols that apply in the schools of Australia today.

The Federal government is considering appointing a new "Children's E-Safety Commissioner " to act as a cyber bullying ombudsman and this may be a way of trying to influence parents in applying more supervision to their children's use of the Internet, but far too many children disregard parental control - and in many homes parents are completely indifferent to this bullying problem.

It is possible that an E-Safety Commissioner might try and impose laws to force social media to cull the more offensive postings, but that would run into a battle with the "Freedom of speech "people - and raise the spectre of Internet censorship.  It is highly unlikely that any bill to that effect would gain  partisan political approval.

Bullying has always been a fact of school life.   The only difference today is the phenomenon of social media and the wider distribution of it's insults in the public arena.  Schools dread Mondays - and many teachers scan the weekend posts to be forewarned of the problems they will face in the classrooms.  For many, giving advice to alleviate distress has become synonymous with teaching the curriculum - as social harmonising becomes an essential part of their job.

This is an unwinnable war.   We can only chip away to reduce the worst excesses and try to get parents to exercise some control over their children's worst rants - and get the children to understand the damage they are causing.