Last week, a 14-year-old girl in the UK committed suicide after being submitted to cyber abuse on the internet.
The pretty little thing, with all her life ahead of her, took her own life after being subjected to abuse on the internet. In the same week, Canadian police made two arrests in the wake of another suicide death. Boys from the same school as a girl took video footage of her being abused and then posted it on the internet. It went viral, and she too, took her own life. She died after her parents decided to take her off a life support machine.
The first person to really raise the alarm was MUT President Kevin Bonello in an opinion piece published in this newspaper this time last week. Since then, this newspaper has upped the ante and questioned the Children’s Commissioner, the Justice secretariat and the Education Ministry. All have confirmed that something definitely needs to be done as there is no specific legislation covering cyber bullying and/or harassment.
In Malta, we tend to ignore things before it is too late, but Mr Bonello has opened Pandora’s Box. He said that recent death of a teenager in Malta, could have, in part, been caused by cyber bullying. He said that the fact that suicides are not reported in this country makes the problem even more taboo.
The Education Ministry agreed that the advent of social media brought with it a new challenge for children and parents – cyber bullying. The use of social media has magnified the problem in this respect yet this issue is a reality that is not only faced in Malta, but everywhere. Educators are always on the alert to detect different forms of bullying within the education institutions and outside, a spokesman for the ministry said.
The Office of the Children’s Commissioner, meanwhile, said that more needs to be done on a global level, given that the internet transcends national boundaries. The internet is an extraordinarily powerful tool of communication and it is able to immensely amplify and exacerbate the reach and the effect of any communication, be this of a positive or negative content.
Children are particularly vulnerable to negative communication. Hence, any negative communication directed to children through the internet. The actual exposure of children to phenomena like cyber-bullying is very high since while children are generally very adept at and fond of using the internet, their inherent immaturity does not always enable them to easily identify and avoid its dangers. More so, parents are not always able to protect their children from such dangers given that their mastery of this modern means of communication may sometimes be below that possessed by their children.
Education is arguably the most important weapon in the armoury against cyber-bullying. This is owing to the fact that it can prevent cases of cyber-bullying, thus sparing children from experiencing the negative effects of this phenomenon. The primary targets of education-based efforts to fight cyber-bullying are children, who should be sensitized about the phenomenon and taught how to avoid falling victim to it and what to do if this happens. Parents, teachers and other adults who have a caring role in relation to children should also be educated on how they can protect children from cyber-bullying. At least, it’s a start. This is a very real, and very dangerous phenomenon that is spreading at lightning speed. We must tackle it before it claims more lives.