Many teachers might be wondering what to do if cyberbullying takes place in their classroom, especially in the aftermath of a recent tragic case where a young girl in Ireland died in a cyberbullying-related suicide.[2] Some are calling for legislative action to make cyberbullying illegal and there have been significant efforts in the UK and EU[3] recently to regulate social media platforms’ liability for harmful content on their sites. As I have argued previously,[4] it is necessary to ensure that platforms take responsibility for assisting on this matter and that the tools they provide and their responses are effective. But we also need to be careful about how we design such regulation lest it fail to address the problem as some of the legislation in the past did.
Regulation alone will not solve the issue of bullying and cyberbullying as it is a broader cultural and social problem. Australia introduced legislation where the government-appointed e-safety commissioner has the authority to review online content that had previously been reported to the company but the company may not have taken any action. If the commissioner established that the content needed to be taken down, the company would face the prospect of a fine if it did not take the content down within a designated deadline. The last year’s review of the 2015 legislation[5] shows that the commissioner worked effectively with the companies to swiftly remove much of the reported content relatively quickly. Something similar has recently been proposed in Ireland too.[6]
Regardless of the outcome of the calls for regulation, most of the major social media platforms, such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter are currently employing tools that are aimed to address the problem of cyberbullying and that teachers need to be familiar with. It is the responsibility of the industry to ensure that these tools are well known to children but also to teachers. While most children and teens, and perhaps many teachers, will have been familiar with blocking and reporting,[7] which allow users to prevent abusive others from further contacting them or to report abusive content to the platform; fewer might have heard of Safety[8] or Help centers,[9] which provide advice as to what to do when cyberbullying happens and how to assist the child on and off the platform itself.
The EU Kids Online network,[10] which I am a member of, has recently completed surveys with 9-17-year old internet using children in so far 14 European countries. The results of the survey in Norway, for instance, where independent use of digital media is very high among children, show that almost two thirds have used the blocking button with about 10% saying they did not know what it was or that they have not seen it. Two fifths have used a reporting button and about 15% did not know what a reporting button was or said they had otherwise not seen it. Meanwhile, only 10% have actually used Safety or Help centers, although more than a half say they know what they are; 35% did not know what these were or have never seen them. Results of the same survey from Serbia, also indicate that children are less familiar with Safety and Help centers than with reporting and blocking tools. There, 84% of children have seen blocking options; 76% have seen reporting and 59% have seen help or safety centers.