Social Networking & Cyberbullying - The Facts, The Challenges, The Solutions - Posted By Christine

After reading the research recommended in Youth, Popular Culture and Texts, I became very interested in the level of social networking and cyberbullying at my school. Since the students have not been blogging, using wikis, forums or discussion boards at school, I was assuming very little student knowledge of ‘Netiquette’ and the pitfalls of participating in online social networks, chat rooms, msn and the like. My travels around Facebook regularly turn up students (and teachers) who have Facebook Profiles with no privacy settings applied at all. Viewing some of these pages gave me an insight into the lack of awareness these students display in terms of what they post and how they communicate with others.

As part of my research I arranged to interview the Head of Secondary and the Head of Primary and during these interviews it emerged that both had dealt with serious cyberbullying incidents during the past week. Several key questions emerged about digital citizenships and cybersafety that I felt needed further investigation.

«     How prevalent is social networking amongst our students, and how does the involvement vary through the year levels?

«     Which sites are students visiting and how frequently?

«     Is Cyberbullying a concern for students, and what forms does it take?

«     What is the incidence of cyberbullying, does it feature more in certain year levels and what technology is being used to bully?

Social Networking and Cyberbullying Survey link – click here to view survey questions.
http://tinyurl.com/25rl6ok (Click 'back' to return to blog.)
Collation of the surveys will take time, but some early data is shown below. Only data on Facebook is graphed so far, Myspace figures were low for all year levels, and Tumblr began featuring in upper year levels. Cyberbullying is perceived mainly as a growing problem across all year levels, with ‘huge problem’ being the second most frequent response. ‘No problem at all’ has negligible responses.

My suggestion to locate, organise and store the best Cybersafety and Digital Citizenship resources available for our students, and to plan lessons incorporating safety, privacy, ethics, cyberbullying, the pitfalls of social networking, hoaxes etc was strongly supported by both ‘Heads’. I have direct access to Years 4 – 9 on a weekly basis and have built up a strong connection with these students. Earlier in the year an Educator who had previously been an undercover police detective working online in social networks to uncover people preying on school children. This was well received but, as the Head of Secondary admits, a one-off visit – not part of a dedicated consistent process to educate the students of online pitfalls and dangers.

                     ‘… you have to do it more consistently……. they live in the here and now.  They don’t think back, they don’t think forward.  They live here and now, so, something that you did 6 months ago with them and showed the consequences of it - that means nothing to them.  That’s exactly why road safety campaigns don’t work for young people.  Because they live in the here and now – they don’t look forward, they don’t look back’ (Head of Secondary, 2010).          

The most suitable online resources I located are found on the Cyberbuzz blog page titled ‘Cyberbullying Resources’. I have included resources on Cybersafety as well, and I am in a position to be able to use these resources immediately with Years 4 – 9 students. I will set up a blog or similar for staff to use with all the resources available. In my teacher librarian position I have been able to connect well with most staff. This places me in an ideal position to conduct training sessions on digital citizenship, cybersafety, ethical and legal issues surrounding online environments.  As a frequent user of Facebook and Twitter, and as a recent blogger, I am well placed to run information sessions with parents where I can de-mystify Facebook and demonstrate and explain Twitter, Flickr, Youtube and other Web 2.0 sites. Being able to draw on experiences with my own daughters will assist my credibility when exploring real life examples and scenarios. The Heads of Primary and Secondary are very keen for me to commence these sessions.

During the research process I collected data on the privacy settings of a Year 7 and Year 8 class by conducting a search for them through my own Facebook page. This gives me a baseline measurement so I can gauge if the sessions I run result in a change in the level of privacy students assign to their social networking pages. At the conclusion of the sessions on Cybersafety, privacy and social networks I will re-visit these students’ sites to see if they have tightened up their settings due to their greater awareness of these issues. But, as the Head of Secondary warns,  

‘Yes, but, again, they need to be shown how to do it and the importance of doing it.  …. to them it seems like a waste of time because they can jump on Facebook and start doing what they want to do - not worried about the consequences, because that is a waste of their time.  …..they don’t want to sit there and do their fields or go through links safeguarding their privacy.  They don’t want to do all that’ (Head of Secondary, 2010). 

This sentiment is backed up by reports that Facebook’s privacy settings are ‘a mess with more than 170 options buried in 50 categories wrapped up in a 6000 word policy’ (Keene, 2010, p. 18). Each time the site is redesigned, the profile reverts to the default settings allowing ‘everyone’ to see your information, photos and conversations. Impatient teenagers either ignore or remain unaware of the need to convert back to their custom privacy settings. The aim is to inform and educate students about the importance of using privacy settings appropriately, whilst emphasising the elements of persistence, searchability, replicability and invisible audiences that characterise ‘networked publics’ (boyd 2007, p.9).

The results of the research into the Privacy Settings of a Year 7 and Year 8 class both with 28 students enrolled is posted below. Whilst both classes had the same number of Facebook accounts differences are apparent in the slightly older children tending towards using photographs or images that didn’t identify them, and having their friends and information less visible than the Year 7s. In both year levels only a small number of students either had no personal photographs or had them hidden. It will be interesting to re-visit the pages in December, after sessions on ‘Digital Footprint’, ‘Be careful what you post’, and general social networking privacy awareness (see Cyberbullying Resources Page for examples of websites and clips that will be used).