Shenanigans
The parent and teen guide to education, lifestyle and all of those ‘teen’ problems
The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil but by those who watch them and do nothing. Albert Einstein.
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The internet
Friend
or
Foe
Traditional physical bullying that happened in the playground can now follow victims and lurk over them whilst on they’re on the internet, this form of bullying can now happen in one of the only places a victim can feel safe, their home, under your roof.
The internet was introduced for the first time commercially to the public in 1992. This revolution changed the way people lived their lives and today it’s considered a fundamental component in modern day living. The World Wide Web has allowed users to gain access to so much in terms of new information and new knowledge of so many diverse topics that weren’t available before. The internet didn’t stop there, when the programme was commercially available companies rushed to make their products available digitally, this was the beginning of the digital age. The youth of today have been saturated in technology since birth.
A negative contribution the introduction of the internet has created is the digitalisation of traditional problems. This problem has often been referred to as ‘name calling in the virtual playground’. The NSPCC reported that 4,500 young people talked to Child Line about online bullying last year. That is enough children to fill the RMS Titanic twice over. A shocking statistic considering Child line also reported that 1 in 4 children have experienced something upsetting online and a staggering third of children have been a victim of cyber bullying. These statistics clearly show us that the children of this generation are being affected by this bullying but aren’t able to seek the help for it.
Youngsters now are receiving Ipads and Tablets for Christmas rather than traditional board games like Buckaroo or Uno. The internet and technological advancements the teenagers of this century have endured has made their lives more digitalised in comparison to their elders whose nostalgia takes them back to days playing about n local parks, not chatting on Facebook messenger. As all parents know, with the sweet comes the sour. The internet has helped enhance everything in modern day living including the dangers.
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Words have powers, use them wisely.
The Latvian social networking site ask.fm has been the centre of a lot of controversy as the anonymous question asking website was and still is playground for bullies to torment their victims. Like all new things, ask.fm was the new craze among teenagers in 2011. Since it’s launch in 2010 the questioning site became very popular as it was like its predecessor formspring. The initial appeal of the social networking site was that questions could be asked to anybody who has an account. It takes 3 minutes to set up an account, all that was required was a date of birth and a valid email account, seems a little too simple. The allure of these sites is the amount of anonymity that you can have, which is daunting because if your child can post anonymously it opens the question, who else can too? From a teenagers point of view they could ask their new crush an infinite amount of questions about their personal life like whom they fancy, what they like doing or what they’re doing on the weekend. You can see the appeal for young teens. However, for bullies or people who have certain vendettas they have the power to turn situations bitter very quickly. Young Alice* found that out all at once. Like her friends Alice created an ask.fm account to join in with the question asking. The questions she was asked weren’t what she was expecting. ‘I joined because all my friends had and everybody was talking about it. It seemed funny because my friends were getting questions about which boys they fancied and things like that, I thought it would be the same for me but it wasn’t’. Alice told Shenanigans about the malicious comments posted to her ‘I wasn’t even asked many questions it was just statements and opinions by anonymous people like ‘you deserve to die’ ‘nobody wants you here’ ‘so many people are two faced about you’. ‘ I didn’t know what was happening.’ The power of the anonymity of Ask.fm allowed the bullies to cower away behind their computer screens and say things that they wouldn’t usually, it has been described as the cowards tool. “Being online means they are getting attention and there is an audience of trillions.” Lucie Russell, Campaigns Director at Young Minds ‘It made me feel horrible about myself paranoid about everyone around me, I loved going to school to hang around with all my friends, then we’d meet up after school but when I started getting comments like this I didn’t want to go anywhere.’ Alice expressed her emotions as the bullying continued on a daily basis on her profile. ‘I was paranoid about everybody because I didn’t know who it could be. It made me feel like everything they were saying was true and I became really depressed and run down.’ ‘I was so upset about it all. I wasn’t expecting anything like this.’ * Name changed for confidentiality
I also had questions and comments about my weight, so I stopped eating properly, I didn’t want everyone to agree with the questions and comments. I had to go to the school nurse and school counsellor to talk about why I’d stopped eating and why my attitude had changed at school. I told them about my Ask.fm profile and an investigation went on at the school to try and ban it.’ ‘Not knowing who they were, that was the worst part about it. If I knew who it was I could say something, or just avoid them completely but it could have been anyone I couldn’t trust anybody, it could have been my best friend for all I know.’ Ask.fm is primarily to ask questions and was created originally as a tool for communication. One of the co-founders of Ask.fm, Mark Terebin, 30, told The Guardian how it’s societies failings that are the problem not Ask.fm “It is necessary to go deeper to find a root of a problem,” he said.
In a horrific case, Ask.fm was an instrument, for bullies to taunt and harass a young girl named Hannah Smith. The 14-year-old girl was the centre of media coverage in 2013 when she was found hung at her house in Leicestershire. ‘She was the victim of savage attacks on Ask.fm’ Hannah’s father, Dave told the worlds media about the cruel taunts Hannah was receiving on the social media site. “I have just seen the abuse my daughter got from people on Ask.fm and the fact that these people can be anonymous is wrong,” Dave Smith, 45, took to the stage of social media to express how these attacks by bullies were the cause of the suicide of his daughter. The Leicester Mercury interviewed the distraught father who’d found out his daughter had hung herself by receiving a phone call from his 16 year old daughter. “I don’t want any other parents to go through what I am going through. “I want this to be sorted out as soon as possible so no other vulnerable children die.”
A l o n e . Abandoned. Ashamed. Depressed. A t t h e e n d . Vic 6
tim.
4,500
44%
Of parent’s believe that their own child is a cyber bully.
Children contacted childline in 2013/14 about cyber bullying.
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s ing
if y
fee l
g n i y l l
We’re all ears
of children go online unsupervised
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eal
B
Of parents think that their child is safe online
Real people, R
65%
only 15% Cyber
An estimated 5.43 million young people in the UK have experienced cyberbullying, with 1.26 million subjected to extreme cyberbullying on a daily basis.
Stories l a e ,R
A voice. e v ha ou
A Harmless text
turned into weeks
of torment
Jessica*, 22, was the victim of online bullying when she was just 15. Unlike traditional online bullying cases where the bullying occurs on social networking sites, Jessica experienced a very different tale. The incident had occurred when Jessica was leaving to walk home after a night hanging out with a large group of friends had texted her friends Zak and Josh to make sure they’d gotten home safe after being out with a large group of friends. A completely harmless text turned into torment and embarrassment for Jessica. Naturally Jessica* didn’t think there was anything wrong and didn’t suspect anything to happen. She returned to school as normal and everything was fine. ‘A few days later I received a phone call at school, it was a girl screaming and shouting at me down the phone yelling that I shouldn’t speak to her boyfriend ever again and I’m not allowed to text him anymore and that I should stay away or else.’ Jessica told Shenanigans that she ‘wouldn’t have picked up the phone if she’d have known but the number was withheld.’
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Jess didn’t think it was anything to be concerned and that it was probably just about the text to Zak and Josh about them getting home safe. Jessica herself had a boyfriend at the time, ‘I was just trying to be a good friend, they had miles to walk and it was pretty cold and late’.
‘I put the dots together quite quickly and realised it was Zak’s girlfriend who’d created the website about me, I didn’t even know why she’d do this because I hardly even knew her, whenever I saw her at school I’d smile because I’m friends with Zak.’
‘It was that night after I got home I saw these posts I’d been tagged in online’ That night Jessica had seen a website that all of her friends were talking about online, when she clicked on the link she was surprised and upset to learn that the website was about her.
I was looking at the website and saw that the profile was friends with another profile, I clicked on it and it was another website making fun of another girl.’ Another website created to publically humiliate somebody else shows that Jessica wasn’t their only target. ‘Although I was so upset and embarrassed about the website I didn’t feel alone or isolated because it wasn’t just happening to me.’
Like all young girls, Alex was focussed on her appearance trying new styles and experimenting with her hair. She’d recently had her hair cut and opted for a full fringe. Alex loved her hair and was very confident about her appearance, that was until the website had circulated.
“That night I went online and saw that someone had made a hate site about me. There were pictures of me that I’d use for my own profile but they were mocking my hair.” The images on the website had photographs of girls mocking her fringe, saying that it looks stupid on her. Naturally someone having an opinion about someone is harmless but publically humiliating somebody at such a young age can have horrible aftershocks.
*Name changed for confidentiality
“At first the website really hurt my feelings, I didn’t want to go to school, I kept putting my hair up so people couldn’t take the mick out of me any more” Jessica still went to school and ignored any taunts thrown her way and with time and patience the bullies were bored and the site was taken down. This is a mild ending to what could have been a serious
case.
Top Tips 1 2 3 4 5
to teach your child to ensure Online safety
Report don’t Respond.
Ensure that your child knows to not engage with the bullying, this will only encourage more retaliation. On every social media platform there is a ‘Report button’, which allows the social media site to block the user from any more interaction.
Don’t isolate yourself.
It’s imperative that your child knows not to dwell on the bullying and not to isolate themselves away, that’s what the bully wants. The longer the victim feels isolated the more dangerous it is for their heath and it can have a lasting effect on their self esteem and emotions.
You’re not the problem, they are!
Bully’s will often make their victims believe that it’s their fault for being bullied. It’s often to see bullies telling victims that they deserve to be bullied, nobody wants them here or nobody likes them, they’re a nobody. Your child needs to know; -This isn’t the case, they’ve gone out of their way to talk to, you are cared about and you are somebody! -Nobody has the right to take away your happiness, remember that!
Screen Shot the bullying.
It’s a criminal offence to cyber bully and if cases get serious and people can be named and shamed it’s always handy to have evidence to back up a victims case.
Seek Help.
We’ve all been children before and we don’t like sharing everything with our parents, but your child needs to know that they matter and that you are there for them no matter what. Even if they cant tell you to their face, tell them to write it down in a letter to let you know what they’re going through.
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s n a g i n a n e Sh Straight from the teens mouth,
talk with but you
Experience. They were teenagers once too.
y d o Noblikes ve en you
i don’t know why they said it. I didn’t even know who ‘they’ were. I just remember being on Ask.fm me and my friends were going to ask questions to each other and ask them who they fancied and stuff. I didn’t even know was Ask.fm was, all my friends were talking about it at dinnertime and I didn’t want to be left out. That night I went on it and told all my friends on Facebook my user name, and I was just having fun with everyone. I didn’t think people would be so horrible. People were writing to me ‘nobody likes you’ ‘your friends are two faced about you’ ‘you don’t have any real friends they slag you off behind your back’
Shenanigans allows parents and their teens to talk about eductaion and lifestyle together. As a brand we want to ensure that every school child in Britain has the skills, confidence and courage to talk about their problems with their parents. It may not be cool to about your ‘feelings’ your mum/dad/guardian they’ve got one thing don’t...
Alices story
I hadn’t done anything wrong, I mean I have had little arguments with girls at school but so
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does everybody else and it gets sorted out a few days later. I asked my best friends and they said it was stupid, they didn’t know who was doing it. It made me so upset. I was so paranoid at school, thinking that everybody is talking about me. I tried to ignore them comments but they stayed in the back of my mind. It was just the odd comment at first and I ended up13 and everything was fine. A week later somebody had posted ‘You deserve to die’ and they were saying lots of different stuff about the way I looks like my weight. Most people would think I was over reacting but it was horrible, I was paranoid about the comments before and then somebody writes that? Who says that to someone?
yeseoruve to
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d die
It made me feel horrible about myself; I was so paranoid and depressed about it all. People don’t realise how hurtful words can be. Everything that was said to me I was starting to believe it, I distanced myself from friends at school because I didn’t know if they were the people sending the messages. I stopped eating because I thought everyone thought I was fat and ugly.
You’re probably reading this thinking it doesn’t sound that bad, she’s over reacting. Looking back now that I’ve spoken about it and over come it, it doesn’t sound that bad but at the time every comment made me more depressed, every horrible word said about me I was starting to believe. I was so isolated and it was because somebody or some people thought it was funny to give me abuse anonymously, it’s cowardly and if it had carried on I dread to think of the extremes id of gone to. So before you think about arguing with someone online or ganging up on somebody saying horrible things, think of how you’d feel in their shoes, think of how you’d react if roles were reversed.
Jessicas story My experience with cyber bullying was so unexpected. I didn’t know why it happened at first but then when I realised and put the dots together it was just because somebody was jealous of me. It started because a group of friends and I were out after school like we do most nights. After it had gotten late we all started walking back in a big group but two of my friends Zak and Josh had to walk a different way on their own. I texted them saying I hope they got home safe and to let us all know that they had, that was it. I hadn’t realised this at the time but It was that text that started the horrible bullying that I experienced. I received this phone call a few days later at school, it was withheld but I answered it anyways. I wish I hadn’t. All I heard was screaming down the phone threatening me and telling me to stay away, nobody wants you in the group
s k o o l Sheso stup
mean come on my fringe? It didn’t particularly bother me at first I thought it was stupid and nobody would see it anyways but someone did and everyone from school had seen it and everyone was talking about it. It was so horrible, nobody likes being laughed at and everybody was laughing at me. It took a few weeks for the site to be forgotten about, I’ve always been pretty confident and didn’t really care about what people thought of me but it just takes one person or one comment to start a domino effect and it can really affect somebody and that’s what people don’t realise. Yes it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.
I didn’t have a clue what it meant, I thought someone was just taking the mick but it got worse. I got home after school and was just chilling on Facebook, that was when my friend told me about this website. My heart dropped, I didn’t know how to react. I saw the website and someone had taken the pictures of me from my profile and was taking the mick out of my fringe! I
Jess is so ugly
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id