How technology is misused to bully

Mobile and internet technologies are generally used by children and young people for their intended purposes i.e. to engage in positive communications and learning. Occasionally, however, the technology is misused in order to bully others.

 

Your school needs to be aware of the different ways that ICT can be abused so that you can effectively investigate and respond to instances of online and mobile bullying. Technology can be misused in myriad ways, as highlighted by the following examples.

 

Bullies may make malicious - or silent - calls or send nasty, threatening, intimidating or harassing text messages.

 

Mobiles can be used to take and share humiliating images of children and young people (and staff).

 

Video clips of children and young people being harassed can be recorded on a mobile and sent to other mobiles or uploaded onto internet sites – a practice sometimes misleading called ‘happy slapping’.

 

Nasty messages or attachments can be sent by IM.

 

Bullies sometimes use someone else’s IM account to forward rude or mean messages to the victim’s list of friends.

 

Bullying can happen through nasty or threatening anonymous messages.

 

Groups of people can use these to pick on an individual or deliberately ignore them.

 

Sometimes people pretend to be someone else in order to become a ‘friend’ and gain personal information that they then use against the victim e.g. for spreading secrets or blackmail.

 

Email can be misused to send nasty or threatening messages.

 

Unsuitable images or video clips or viruses may be sent as an email attachment.

 

Bullies sometimes hack into a victim’s account to forward personal emails or delete emails and personal contacts.

 

 

Inappropriate content can be sent and received via webcam.

 

Victims may also be persuaded – or threatened – into acting in inappropriate ways that are captured on webcam.

 

 

Bullies may use social networking sites to post nasty comments and humiliating images or videos. 

 

Groups of people may pick on an individual by deliberately excluding them from a network or a friends list.

 

Bullies can also create distasteful fake profiles of their victim to upset or harass them or to get them into trouble.

 

 

Incidents of misuse include the posting of embarrassing or humiliating film of someone.

 

 

These may be misused to post inappropriate messages or images.

 

 

Players may pick on weaker or less experienced users, repeatedly killing their characters.

 

They may also call the victim names and make abusive or derogatory remarks.

 

The equipment may be used to forward unwanted messages to other devices in the immediate vicinity via Bluetooth™ technology.