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Submitted by Mike Grenville on Thu, 13 Dec 2007 17:18 |
Cyber-bullying allows fear to follow children all the way into the home and with almost every child in the UK having a mobile, at least a third of 12 - 15 year olds have already become a victim of cyber-bullying in the UK. AdaptiveMobile says it is time that operators provided controls to parents and users.
The mobile phone is an intensely personal device, that is carried by most people everywhere they go, even leaving it turned on beside their bed at night. By the age of 15, almost every child in the UK has a mobile (94% of all 13-15 year olds) and 23% of three to six year olds in the UK use a mobile phone. Likewise in Italy 31% of 5-13 year-olds have mobile phones and nearly 100% of 14-18 year-old.
The Dark Side
Suddenly everyone really is connected and the range of benefits to society that flows from widespread mobile phone access grows every day. But there is a dark side to this always on private communication. According to the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families, 34% of 12-15 year-olds in the UK have experienced some form of cyber-bullying. A study by the British Psychological Society in March 2007 reported that one in 10 boys and one in five girls aged 11-14 reports having been bullied by text or email. A MSN Cyber Bullying Report this year found that nearly half (48%) of UK parents are aware of the phenomenon of cyber-bullying.
“Traditional bullying can be a terrifying experience for children" said Simeon Coney, VP of Business Development, AdaptiveMobile (pictured below), "but cyber-bullying has allowed fear to follow children all the way into the home. The mobile phone, purchased by parents as a way of keeping their kids safe, becomes the means for harassment."
Complex Challenge
Bullies dislike face to face confrontation making mobiles an ideal medium. Added to that cyber-bullying is perceived as worse than physical bullying according to 13% of people. When 74% of teens did not go to anyone for advice the last time they were cyber-bullied, the scale of the problem starts to come into focus.
"Parents are not even aware of the issues, never mind the controls to do something about it" said Coney. "And even if kids report it to the parent, what can they do? Kids they use their phone to keep in contact, express themselves; its their camera, MP3 player and so on. So they are frightened of reporting bullying as they fear they will have the phone taken away.
As ever more young people now own mobile handsets, have access to the mobile web, as well as instant messaging and email, the challenge becomes even more complex to overcome" said Coney.
Operator Power
He points out that the busiest network time for phones owned by kids is 10pm - when they have gone to bed. This is not just calls and SMS but internet usage. And as 76% of their phones are prepay, the parents have no record of when and for what purpose the phone is being used for.
Coney says that it is the mobile operators who have both the power and the responsibility to let parents protect their children from unwanted and threatening messages and calls. "It’s time for mobile operators everywhere to tackle this crisis head on. Parents need to feel protected by their mobile operator and want their children to be able to use their phones safely and responsibly. It is only right that security and content filtering services are provided that guard youngsters from receiving abusive images, emails, SMS and harassing calls."
Hiden Child Phone Market
Operators know that the under 24 year olds is a third of their customer base yet there is a real nervousness of even acknowledging that there even is a child market. Putting their head in sand is not helping anyone" said Coney.
The issue could be one of rising importance for operators as a Conservative Party paper in November looked at how teachers can be legally empowered to ban phones in the classroom. The challenge is that parents buy the phone as a safety device for after-school pick up, but if the school bans them, this puts them in direct conflict with parents.
Positive Benefits
However, tackling the bullying issue does not need to just be a defensive move, but could have many positive benefits for operators.
“Studies show that parents will pay a premium for the ability to blacklist individual numbers and block messages from short codes or content providers to prevent such persecution. As long as they guarantee that the mobile service they are offering their customers is safe, monitored and secure; and provide parents with the ability to put controls in place, operators can reduce customer churn and ensure that both parent and child feel protected from cyber-bullying once and for all.â€
"There have been various handset technologies which are all complex. The network capabilities are out there - the challenge is getting operators to pick them up" said Coney. "If text messages are rejected with a message that says they are being monitored, it immediately affects behaviour."
In territories outside Europe mobile operators have been more open to this, for example in the Middle East, USA and the Far East. While operators are beginning to take the issue seriously, now they now need to bite the bullet and provide tools..
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