Irish Gov't Seeks To Rein In Cyber Bullying

An anonymous reader points out a story on the Irish Times that says "the Irish government is looking for ways to combat 'cyber-bullying' after data indicated that a significant percentage of young children are subjected to this kind of abuse via their mobile phone and popular social network accounts. The industry has been asked to come up with solutions for this problem and a government office is due to publish a guide on the issue in the near future. Surely this is a problem faced by children in all developed countries these days." Add "for the children" to the list of reasons to track the Web-site habits of mobile web users in Ireland.

Comments

Just plain bullying

[bigtomrodney]

As an Irish person I'm glad that something is being done about bullying. I was bullied at school a lot and when not being beaten was subject to horrendous psychological bullying.

The main point here though is that so-called "Cyber-bullying" is just bullying. Various organisations have been sensationalising this issue by prefixing [i]cyber[/i] and pretending it's a new issue. What about when I was receiving phone calls at all hours? Was that cyber-bullying? It was just called bullying in my day.

I really think that this whole issue is doing more to harm the reputation of the internet/computers/phones than it is to resolve the larger issue of bullying. All I expect to see from this is a large set of draconian yet ineffective restrictions placed around communication media and this is something that disgusts me for a lot of reasons.

Re:Just plain bullying

[bigtomrodney]

and to the parents that don't teach their children how to cope with being bullied.

Bollocks . When mob mentality comes into it, you see how well you stand up against 15-20 people. It's starts with the leader of the cool gang, then it's the cool gang and then it's the people siding with the rest of them to keep on the good side.

It's amazing how one or two bad apples can turn the tables. It is not the Hollywood image of one bigger kid pushing people around - far from it. The big kids, much like bigger dogs, have nothing to prove.

Re:Just plain bullying

[theaveng]

The solution is to stop raising a bunch of rude brats. The parents/teachers need to tell teenagers, "You have the body of an adult (reproduction, et cetera), and now it's time to start acting like one. Abuse of your peers will Not be tolerated." The bullying messages and phone calls are just a symptom, and treating the symptom is not going to cure the disease. You need to go directly to the source and teach teens to act with manners & that insulting other people is Not acceptable.

I too was bullied as a kid, not with internet but with verbal abuse, which led me to keep quiet so nobody noticed me. I never "escaped" that verbal abuse until I found myself in college with an adviser who refused to tolerate such behavior from his students. That's what we need today, but starting at age 13. If we can teach teens about adult behaviors like sex, then surely we can teach them manners too.

I used to be bullied

[Anonymous Coward]

It stopped when I was legally able to drive. Nothing concentrates the mind of someone who beat you up in the playground as much as seeing you accelerate towards them and swerve away at the last second later in the day.

Learn a lesson from America

[MikeRT]

The main reason we have a lot of bullying is that we have policies that don't allow students to ever confront bullies and use force to defend themselves when attacked. If a student punches a bully in the face for trying to do some sort of nasty physical bullying, like locking them in a locker, they can get suspended/expelled and arrested.

Let the victims of bullies stand up for themselves. It used to work in this country. When my dad was bullied at an early age back in the 1950s, he and the bully got into a fight and the bully got beaten up. The principle not only didn't care about the harm done to the bully, but hauled him into his office and called his parents to let him know that he had gotten beaten up by a kid who he had severely bullied. Back then the courts would have laughed any lawsuit over that out of court and would have probably awarded legal fees to my grandmother if she had to hire a lawyer to defend my dad.

The solution to bullying isn't "education," it's letting them get subjected to the consequences of their actions. I would consider it poetic justice if in a modern incident like what happened to my dad, the kid not only beat up the bully, but posted the video to Youtube for the whole world to mock the shit out of the bully.

Don't give me that "oh they're hurting on the inside" argument for treating them like a wounded animal, instead of a predator. Most people choose to not become like those who hurt them. Those that do choose that path shouldn't be shown any particular mercy by society or the legal system when their victims put them harshly in their place.

with an iron fist

[teazen]

Ah... my shoddy mastery of the English language made me read the headline as 'Irish government seeks to reign in cyber bullying', which to me seems to be a much more attainable goal.