AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
Is celebrity protected against online abuse? You might think so, especially when an individual’s success is hard won. But look at the way that nasty comments about his appearance have impacted Peaky Blinders star Barry Keoghan, to the point where he told US radio Sirius XM listeners: “I don’t want to attend places and I don’t want to go outside.”
Keoghan, from Dublin’s Summerhill, overcame the difficulties of losing his mother and having 14 foster homes to star in movies like The Banshees of Inisherin and Saltburn. Who are these people who revel in making damaging posts? Grown-up cyber bullies, who should know better.
Just where do you start with behaviour like that? You only need to look at the news headlines and catastrophic wars in Ukraine, Lebanon and Iran to see what damage can be done when bullies expand their activities onto the world stage.
No better place than school where bullying online or off starts and, when unchecked, may continue on into adulthood. Unlike the school yard, social media platforms seem tailor-made for bullying, with all the advantages of privacy, online sharing and, until recently, lack of culpability for minors. Tailor-made, except that they do provide traceable evidence.
Last month the message that cyber bullying is illegal thanks to Coco’s Law 2020, was brought home in classrooms for the first time as a lesson in the Garda Schools’ Programme. Named for Nicole ‘Coco’ Fox who died tragically by suicide in 2018 after years of online abuse, the law makes it an offence punishable by fines or imprisonment to send threatening or offensive communications, or to threaten to send or send intimate images without an individual’s consent.
While all schools have been required to have anti- bullying programmes by the Department of Education since last year, significantly the Garda Programme emphasises accountability and the point that there are legal consequences to damaging others through bullying online. The law applies to minors.
Why does cyberbullying, including harassment, social exclusion and the posting of embarrassing information, occur in the first place? Pupils who bully do so for a variety of reasons, from the need to feel in control and boost low self-esteem to copying aggression at home.
DCU’s Anti Bullying Centre’s guide points out that it doesn’t happen in isolation. “Cyberbullying is less likely to happen as a stand-alone act. In general, offline forms of bullying, like school bullying, spill over to the online environment. Bullying that is based on race or ethnicity, is less likely to occur in schools that celebrate different student culture and backgrounds.”
The guide suggests that conversations around the subject where children may not understand the lasting damage caused by bullying are a more effective way to deal with it than restricting access to social media which can make children feel more isolated. A national survey of 9- to 17 year olds found that 85% of them felt safe on line which was important to them as a way of staying in touch with friends and for entertainment.
The Garda schools programme around Coco’s Law encourages children to tell a trusted adult if they are aware of cyberbullying, like the posting of intimate images. This is an important step, but the survey found when children saw something that upset them on the internet, only 19% reported telling their parent or caregiver.
Also parents may be unaware of what their offspring are up to online, with a survey by Cyber Safe Kids showing that 75% of parents didn’t supervise their children’s online use.
We have Jackie Fox, Coco’s mother. to thank for her campaign for a law against cyberbullying. Often changes in the law are due to individual action prompted by tragedy.
Despite all the endless debate and equally endless official inaction about banning social media or smart phones for children under a certain age due to the harm caused, it took a case by a damaged 20-year-old to start change. In a landmark US court case last month tech giants Meta and YouTube were found to have been liable for designing products that were addictive. The 20-year-old who claimed her addiction started at six was awarded $6m., setting a ball rolling which will finally cause the big bullies of the tech industry to clean up their act.
