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Online Bullying Counselling on Increase, Says Childline (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a BBC report:The number of children and young people needing counseling about online bullying has increased by 88 percent over five years, according to a helpline. The NSPCC's Childline service said it counselled more than 4,500 children in the past year compared to about 2,400 in 2011-12. The total number suffering online abuse is thought to be far higher. Some children as young as seven told Childline how they were tormented, abused and scared to go to school. The charity said online trolls caused misery and humiliation for thousands of children. Childline's president Dame Esther Rantzen said the figures should be a wake-up call.
"Bullying can wreck young people's lives, especially now that the bullies don't stop at the school gates," she said. Cyber-bullying can follow them home until it becomes a persecution they cannot escape.
we should ban free speech so that crybabies can have a safe space. Best start with eliminating all negative stories, including this one.
That sounds dangerous.
...I have been bullied on Slashdot many many times! But never again! I won't allow it.
An important psychological study may be to determine why younger generation doesn't just "walk away" from the online bullying when there isn't a physical intimidation keeping them from it. I remember my daughter freaking out because she participated in this absolutely weird "ask.fm" where you anonymously ask and answer questions about a person. My first response to seeing what was being said was rage, but then I said to her...just don't go there. Don't ask anonymous questions about yourself...don't answer questions about other people. No one has power over you if you just ignore it. And luckily that was enough and it was no longer a problem. But years go by and kids seem just so attached to their social personas that they can't just walk way. I get into an argument on facebook or whatever and I'll just close it if I get too worked up. And voila I stop thinking about it. But kids don't seem to have that capability and it makes me wonder why not.
This would all be so much better if we didn't have to always hear Helen Lovejoy worrying "who will think of the children?".
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
...are children young as seven 'running around' the Internet and getting into situations where they're exposed to trolling? I'm sorry, but this sounds a lot like something parents need to deal with vs. something like Childline. From TFA:
"My parents don't realise how upset it's making me and they tell me to stand up for myself or just not play anymore but they don't know how hard that is."
How about parents STOPPING their seven (or 10 or 12) year old kid from playing the game if it's causing this much distress, vs. 'just telling them to stop' ? Be the parent for Christ's sake. If that means being 'tough' and taking away the game that's causing your kid to angst, do it.
It's not possible "not to allow" bullying on Slashdot for you personally, it's up to the moderators in aggregate.
It is possible to reduce the effect of the bullying, either by simply ignoring it or leaving Slashdot in which case it will have little to no effect on you.
Given the remarkable efficacy of the approach I take to online bullying called "not giving a shit what anyone online thinks about me" I have become essentially immune from even the most caustic comments. I suggest you, and anyone else who ever uses any kind of online contact with other people, employ it. In the past the approach might also have been labeled "Growing a pair", but I bow to todays more modern sensibilities and spirit of inclusion to cover those who have no balls.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
About as valid as "gay conversion therapy". Chiropractors for the mind. But this is the land of opportunity, so why not?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I was bullied the old-fashioned way when I was in 2nd grade by a tenacious chubby jerk. Most kids join a social clique to help them via numbers, but I was a shy.
As painful as it was, I have to say it was a useful life lesson. Life is full of jerks and bullies and one MUST learn to deal with them one way or another. I've encountered sociopathic conniving assholes in the office also.
It's probably unrealistic to try to stop all bullies and trolls. Thus, children need to be taught how to deal with them, whether it's via eastern meditation, counseling, karate or combination. Different solutions may be better for different children.
Such lesson from my youth also help me to mostly tune out online bullies/trolls, having had a couple of nasty encounters. I just hate the practical aspect of forum text wasted on their repetition of insults and BS. It's comparable to spam on steroids. If they don't get their way, they'll try sink the entire ship via repetition and clutter.
Table-ized A.I.
I cannot for the life of me understand how it is possible to be bullied online. In my day the bully stole your lunch money, or beat the shit out of you if you refused to give it to him. You learned to stay away from him very quickly. Sad story of bullying over. How is it that we now have a society where children are incapable figuring out how to stay away from bullies.
So...'yearst' like 'first'?
Some children as young as seven told Childline how they were tormented, abused and scared to go to school.
Just watching the freaking news is likely to make some people feel that way. Maybe the government should start censoring the press?
I don't know why everyone is so eager to shove this behavior underground. Then you'll have mystery suicides and wonder why.
In this case, 'zero tolerance' policies and the predictive miss of Trump's win last week have a lot in common.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
You need to divorce SJW whining from discussion of bullying school age children.
This is about minors being harrassed. At those ages a child's brain is still underdeveloped and emotional abuse levels that an adult could brush off are damaging to them for the same reason that an adult is less likely to have their arm or face bones break in response to physical abuse levels that would very probably break a child's bones.
If developmental psychology isn't something you 'get' maybe a geekier explanation is in order. Think of this like training a neural net ... train it wrong a few times and it can be fixed, but train it wrong year after year and it gets set in a broken mold from which there may be no recovery. That's why persistent and pervasive bullying of today is so much worse than the intermittent and partially escapable bullying of the past.
let kids participate in the purge! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The new TUFN UP plan will eliminate the need for counseling for cyberbullying entirely.
If our children don't get online bully counselling, how will they ever get good at it?
Because kids are not miniature adults and do not have the same experience, maturity, and coping skills that adults have. In fact these continue to improve for most people into late adulthood.
Also neuroscience has increasingly shown that our brains continue to develop into our mid to late twenties, and that the brain is far more plastic and regenerative than was thought even ten years ago.
Also, as others have pointed out, online presence is far more pervasive and central to daily life than even five years ago.
They're bullying you online? There is this neat feature called "block". You can do it on Facebook, email, and there is even an app for those pesky texts. That'll be $200 plz.
Where was the trigger warning that this story and the comments within may offend my sensibilities by being exposed to attitudes and ideas that are inconsistent with my own?
. .
Hasn't anybody been paying attention? Bullying is now condoned and encouraged. It might even get you elected president someday!
And people say violence never solves anything.
Stop giving your under 12 year old children internet access that early.
It doesn't make any sense for "children as young as seven..." to access internet chat and runs back to mommy for being bullied when they don't even know the difference between an online game vs an offline game (you sure it wasn't Wario bullying you?).
If you really want your kids to have an iPhone or whatever to access internet, be damn if they dropped it but at least limit the websites to only a few. If they learn to unblock other websites, then it's on their own.
This just tells me an increase of "88 percent over five years" of incompetence parents dealing with kids.
Cyberbullying is an improvement over IRL bullying, where only the strong and/or popular could bully the weak.
Now anyone can cyberbully anyone, because on the Internet, nobody knows you are a dog!
I've been aggressed!!! This man said he'[s stronger than me, then opened the pickle jar!!!! Aiieeee!!!!