海角大神

Hannah Smith: What exactly is cyberbullying and how prevalent is it?

Hannah Smith committed suicide after being bullied relentlessly online. Doubtless, we'll be hearing a lot about how cyberbullying is the scourge of the tech generation, but that's not the whole story. 

The UK has seen too much social cruelty recently, and tragedy as well, with the suicide of 14-year-old Hannah Smith. Though there has been plenty of news coverage and analysis already 鈥� linking Hannah鈥檚 suicide to cruel comments in social site Ask.fm 鈥� a formal inquiry into what happened has only just begun, the聽.

And suicide prevention experts on both sides of the Atlantic caution against citing any single factor, including cyberbullying, as the cause (here鈥檚 potentially life-saving guidance from聽聽in Britain and the聽).

So before much is known about this case, it might be helpful to consider what we do know about three things: 1) bullying, 2) the relationship between bullying and suicide, and 3) the nature of social media.

Bullying & cyberbullying

Bullying is a serious social problem, but not just among youth and it's more of a problem offline than online. It seems to happen wherever there鈥檚 human interaction, and 鈥� because social media is such a new phenomenon to people everywhere 鈥� its presence and unprecedented visibility in digital spaces has brought a major international resurgence of concerns about bullying.

That鈥檚 both good and bad 鈥� bad because the focus of public concern is more on social media (because it鈥檚 the new, little understood piece of the equation) than on the behavior, and good because there鈥檚 evidence that this time around we鈥檒l get much farther in fixing the problem. More on that in a minute, but first what we know about bullying and cyberbullying鈥�.

Not just youth and not mostly online: A 2010 US national survey published by聽聽indicates that, with 35 percent of adult workers in the US having experienced it, bullying is at least as big a problem among adults as among youth. Compare that to data about youth bullying cited in an issue brief by the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC): that in-person bullying is still greater than cyberbullying, with 32 percent of 12- to 18-year-olds having experienced bullying offline and 4 percent of the same sample having experience cyberbullying. 鈥淎nother study found that approximately 13% of students in grades 6-10 reported being cyberbullied,鈥� it added.

Other research shows higher figures for cyberbullying 鈥� the聽聽puts the figure at 24 percent of young people, on average, across multiple studies 鈥� but still lower than offline bullying. David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center (CCRC) at University of New Hampshire, confirms this in his 2013 report 鈥�.鈥�

Not a growing problem: What we never see in the news is reports that bullying is in聽decline聽in the US (I doubt the picture is much different in the UK). 鈥淭he surveys that reflect change over the longest time periods, going back to the early 1990s, consistently show declines in bullying and peer victimization, some of it remarkably large,鈥� Dr. Finkelhor wrote in his report last January.

Right on the first page of the report is a chart showing a 74 percent decline in violent victimization at school among 12- to 17-year-olds between 1992 and 2011, the latest available data from the US Department of Justice. (I'll shortly be blogging about more great research on bullying from the CCRC.)

Bullying and suicide

There鈥檚 a lot of insight in the SPRC鈥檚 issue brief about the relationship between bullying and suicide, starting on p. 2, and more recently from聽聽(AAP) which looked at both online and offline bullying in relation to suicide in 41 cases in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.

The study鈥檚 author, John LeBlanc, MD, found that 鈥�78% of adolescents who committed suicide were bullied both at school and online, and only 17% were targeted online only.鈥� So, he continued in the AAP鈥檚 press release, 鈥渃yberbullying is a factor in some suicides, but almost always there are other factors such as mental illness or face-to-face bullying.鈥澛�

聽(an older US-based Q&A site allowing anonymity like the Latvia-based Ask.fm cited in the coverage of Hannah Smith鈥檚 case) and Facebook were specifically mentioned in 21 of the 41 cases Dr. LeBlanc reviewed. Text or video messaging was involved in 14 of the cases. About the anonymity factor: 鈥淐ertain social media, by virtue of allowing anonymity, may encourage cyberbullying,鈥� LeBlanc added.

Social media

So while multiple sources 鈥� doctors, researchers, and bullying prevention experts 鈥� caution against focusing on a single factor such as cyberbullying in suicide, cyberbullying and even social media are the focus of speculation about the cause of Hannah Smith鈥檚 suicide.

It鈥檚 understandable that people fear or focus reflexively on what they understand the least, but we now have enough research to understand social media as more of a mirror than a cause 鈥� a mirror reflecting a growing proportion of human interaction and behavior, positive, negative, and neutral.

When it鈥檚 negative 鈥� and it鈥檚 news reporters鈥� job to report what鈥檚 rare, e.g., airline crashes not safe landings 鈥� the strength of our reaction is understandably proportionate to how disturbing the image is.

What鈥檚 different about this new media era, in addition to invisible audiences, instant copy-and-paste mass distribution, searchability, and other聽聽social media researcher Danah Boyd detailed in her 2009 PhD dissertation, is that the full spectrum of everyday interaction is more visible 鈥� in our faces, even, more than ever. It鈥檚 deeply disturbing, but the increased聽visibility聽of cruel behavior doesn鈥檛 mean increased cruel behavior. It鈥檚 often taken to mean that by reporters and policymakers, however.

We very much need to reduce trolling and abuse of online anonymity by Net users of all ages, and we will as social norms flow more and more into digital environments, but we must not react to tragic cases by communicating that social media causes social cruelty or suicide. If we do, we鈥檙e misinforming our children about the problem and failing to equip them to help create solutions that absolutely require their (and all users鈥�) help in user-driven media environments.

Limited but distributed & shared regulatory power

UK Member of Parliament Diane Abbott and other public figures are calling on social media companies to take more responsibility for the behavior of their users and on government to pressure them to,聽.

Social media services can always do more to respond quickly to reports of threats and severe harassment, but policymakers don鈥檛 understand social media if they think that even the swiftest response to bullying that is reported (much less than what goes unreported) can fix offline relationship problems or help vulnerable people.

It must be that, when we think that social media鈥檚 the problem, we turn to it for the solution. But nothing a single online service can do could stop cruel behavior that moves fast and fluidly among sites, texting services, and apps, and from offline to online and back again, in what is often a chain of action and reaction.

An account can be shut down, but a determined troll can set up a new one all too quickly. The context is not a single text, page, site, app, or service, it鈥檚 everyday life 鈥� for young people, typically school life 鈥� something on which a media service, even if it had a mere few thousand users, couldn鈥檛 possibly have enough context to solve emotional or relational problems or stop a sociopath.

That being the case, then what can public or government pressure (in this case, on a company in a another country) do but bring about incremental changes in the few responsible, high-profile services the public and governments know about? Then too, if that pressure somehow makes the services more restrictive, users who don鈥檛 want those restrictions can simply move on to less restrictive, less responsible sites, apps, and services.

What will help

To her credit, Abbott called on her government and Education Secretary Michael Gove 鈥渢o rethink policy and give greater importance to teaching children about relationships.鈥� She said she felt the government鈥檚 main failing is a 鈥渞efusal to make sex and relationship education compulsory.鈥� Based on what I鈥檝e learned in the past two years of working with psychologists, researchers, risk prevention experts, and social-literacy educators, I think she鈥檚 right. That 鈥� and I鈥檒l interpret 鈥渞elationship education鈥� to mean social-emotional learning (SEL) or social literacy 鈥� will go far in tackling bullying online and offline, in schools and our children鈥檚 future workplaces (see聽). But it will take time, of course, and is therefore not a political solution.

So more research and education is always good, but collectively we know plenty already about how to help reduce bullying, trolling, and other social cruelty online. We can help young people have good experiences online by鈥�

• Providing them with evidence-based social-literacy training and/or bullying-prevention programs that embrace online as much as offline interaction (SEL just聽聽than bullying prevention).
• Instead of representing them as potential victims, giving them a sense of agency and efficacy in digital environments 鈥� helping them see that they are stakeholders in their own wellbeing online as well as that of their peers and communities.
• Instead of risk avoidance, focusing more on supporting risk assessment and the resilience that helps them deal with social cruelty and heal more quickly when it does happen (see聽聽about how resilience doesn鈥檛 come without risk). That way, they may be less prone to the depression that 鈥渋s a major risk factor for suicide,鈥� according to the SPRC.
• In online and offline safety programs, giving as much weight to internal protections 鈥� resilience, empathy, media literacy, and ethics 鈥� as to external measures such as filtering, monitoring, rules, and policymaking.

Those will all help greatly, but the solution is no more dependent just on youth training than it can be on governments or social media services. By the nature of today鈥檚 user-driven, very social media, the power to improve everybody鈥檚 experiences in social media is distributed and safety a shared responsibility (see聽聽about how it works in the globally popular, Sweden-based online game Minecraft).

海角大神 has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Anne Collier blogs at聽