A Sense of Community

Tia Fisher

In our recent guide, How to Moderate Teens and Tweens, we examined the psychology of teenagers when they use online or on mobile platforms, and the perceived anonymity that gives rise to bolder behaviour.

Let’s face it, all of us have made choices as a teenager that we want to forget about, but what if we never had the option of forgetting? Yesterday’s research by Beatbullying highlighted the issues of ‘sexting’ and bullying by children and teenagers using mobile and social media.

At an age when these children are developing and learning about their own views, opinions, sexuality and personality - as well as dealing with emotional and peer pressure issues - the boldness and risk-taking that teenagers engage in these days can have lasting and sometimes extremely damaging consequences.

The Beatbullying survey showed that one in three teens have received offensive or distressing sexual images electronically. It also revealed that 23 per cent of these “sexts” came from a boyfriend or girlfriend.

One in three of these images were sent via an instant messenger service.

The immediacy of this technology, combined with the ability to capture the content, and the viral nature of the pictures involved, have a high potential for being spread from person-to-person until a decision to share something private with a trusted friend becomes the talking point of the classroom.

If you asked most of these teenagers if they would expose themselves to people in the school playground, they’d probably be appalled. The fact is, the teens involved are taking part in this activity in the privacy of their homes, and sending the results to a person they think they can trust via a technology that also makes them feel safe.

The only way we can tackle this issue is by engaging with teens in the environment that they feel confident in, which means that parents and teachers need to understand what they are dealing with. They need to realise what teens can do with computers and mobile phones, beyond sending text messages or researching their school homework, to enable them to communicate on the same level as the teens they are trying to protect.

There are a growing number of excellent resources in this area (and I’ll list just a few) where parents, teachers and carers can find help and advice.  Aside from Beatbullying (a charity which provides mentorship to deal with on and offline bullying), good resources are Digizen, which promotes responsible digital citizenship, itself with a very useful resource hub on cyberbullying, and a useful new guide by McAfee, aimed at educating parents.