Malta tomorrow celebrates the 35th anniversary of Freedom Day, a day on which we commemorate the withdrawal of the British military from Malta. To today’s younger generation those events may seem centuries away but the fact of the matter is that many of those who were teenagers that day now have teenage children of their own.
And times have certainly changed since then. In fact, being a teenager today is, in so many respects, a completely different reality to what being a teenager was back in 1979 when things such as mobile telephony, the internet, social networks and the like were the stuff of science fiction. Today, this kind of instantaneous connectivity and communication is taken as a given – a normal, integral part of life as we know it.
And while these new means of communication have beyond any doubt changed the way in which life is lived, that technological progress also has its pitfalls – pitfalls that today’s parents of teenagers may not fully appreciate.
Today, surveys have shown that the vast majority of Maltese minors have internet access at home, many in the privacy of their bedrooms or smartphone. This is, on one hand, positive and all due credit should be given to past initiatives aimed at bringing the country’s children into the now vital online world.
But with that growth comes a tandem growth in the online threats potentially faced by children navigating the sometimes murky waters of the internet. This is not to say that the internet is a cesspool of seediness and paedophiles, but the internet does have a more ominous underbelly, and one that is easily accessible at the click of a mouse.
Nor does it mean that parents need to be tracking every keystroke their children make. What it means is that parents need to properly educate their children of the potential dangers of the online world. It means that children themselves need to be made wise enough to not tumble into those pitfalls.
On today’s front page we deal with an extremely sensitive subject matter, the online bullying and tormenting on a particular website of a teenage girl who recently lost her life in a particularly tragic way. We will not enter into the merits of the case nor speculate on the many rumours surrounding this tragedy.
What we have reported is fact: the girl was tormented time and time again about her issues by her peers, with most of her cries for help having fallen not on deaf ears but on hateful, malicious ones. Aided by the dubious policy of the notorious Ask.fm website, which allows complete anonymity for those using the site, she was mocked repeatedly and most harshly about her problems. She was, in a nutshell, cyber-bullied in the most crass and heartless of ways.
The decision to publish the story was a difficult one. The events surrounding this case are beyond grief, the police are still investigating the circumstances surrounding her tragic death and this unfortunate soul was only laid to rest on Friday.
At the end of the day, however, we feel that today’s parents of teenagers, children who are so immersed in today’s world of social networking, need to have a wake-up call. They need to be made aware of what their children may be doing or be exposed to in today’s multi-faceted, wonderful yet perilous online world, a world rendered even more dangerous given the natural ups and downs of adolescence.
This is not only about the very dubious elements of Ask.fm, which has been in the news internationally on several occasions over cyber-bullying that has led to a number of suicide cases and whose refusal to cooperate with law enforcement authorities is beyond criminal in light of what takes place on the website. And perhaps, little known by their parents, Ask.fm is ragingly popular among Malta’s teenagers.
In this world of inextricable interconnectivity, parents need to re-connect with their teenagers; they need to speak with them not only as parents but as friends. They need to help their children navigate their murky waters. This is the only way to really get the right messages through to teenagers.
Most parents know that telling a teen not to do something will only make them do it more. If they tell their children to not use sites like Ask.fm it will only make them do it more, undercover. They should also know that for whatever website blocking software they can install on a teenager’s computer, there are a dozen ways to circumnavigate it. Any teenager can also easily erase their internet history at the click of a mouse, leaving no trace of their online activities.
Although we are certain that the online abuse endured by the girl, who merely cried out for help to her online peers, was only part of the picture, it was certainly a factor. We have shown restraint in not publishing many of the details out of respect for her memory and for the loved ones she has left behind
What we have published, we hope, is just enough to serve as a wakeup call for parents to look into what their teens are doing online, the issues that are affecting them, whether they are being bullied or harassed, and to help them through any of these problems should they be facing them.
We also carry advice from the police force, which urges parents to closely supervise their children’s internet use, particularly their use of social networks. Parental supervision, according to the police, which has received many reports in the past about this particular website, can help identify situations that may give rise to abuse.
But at the end of the day, despite all the supervision parents may have over their children’s internet use, given the prevalence of internet over mobile telephony and Wi-Fi hotspots dotting more and more of the country, it is the children themselves who are online who need to be on the ball. Parents must be on the ball, and in so doing they must make sure that their kids are on the ball too.