2LT International News

Around one-in-three young people across 30 countries say they have been bullied online, while one-in-five report that they have skipped school because of it.

Those are some of the key findings in a new poll released on Wednesday by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Special Representative on Violence against Children.

Speaking out anonymously through the youth engagement tool U-Report, almost three-quarters of young people also said social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, are the most common place for online bullying.

“Connected classrooms mean school no longer ends once a student leaves class, and, unfortunately, neither does schoolyard bullying”, UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said Thursday. “Improving young people’s education experience means accounting for the environment they encounter online as well as offline.”

Via SMS and instant messaging, young people were asked a series of questions about their experiences of online bullying and violence, including who they thought should be trying to end it.

Some 32 per cent of those polled believed governments should end cyberbullying, 31 per cent put the onus on young people themselves to stop the harassment and 29 per cent cited internet companies as bearing the chief responsibility.

“One of the key messages that we can clearly see from their opinions is the need for children and young people involvement and partnering” said Najat Maalla Mjid, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children. “We are in this together and we must share the responsibility in partnership.”

The poll results also challenge the notion that cyberbullying among classmates is something unique to wealthier schools.

For example, 34 per cent of respondents in sub-Saharan Africa said they had been a victim of online bullying. And some 39 per cent said they knew about private online groups inside the school community, where children share information about peers for the purpose of bullying.

#ENDviolence

As part of UNICEF‘s campaign to #ENDviolence in and around schools, children and young people from around the world drafted a Youth Manifesto last year, calling on governments, teachers, parents and each other to help end violence and ensure students feel safe in and around school including calling for protection online.

“All over the world, young people in both high and low-income countries are telling us that they are being bullied online, that it is affecting their education, and that they want it to stop,” said Ms. Fore. “As we mark the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, we must ensure children’s rights are at the forefront of digital safety and protection policies.”

More than 170,000 13 to 24 year-olds participated in the poll through the youth engagement tool U-Report, including young people from Albania, Bangladesh, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cte d’Ivoire, Ecuador, France, Gambia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo, Liberia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Moldova, Montenegro, Myanmar, Nigeria, Romania, Sierra Leone, Trinidad & Tobago, Ukraine, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.

Stop Sextortion

Bullying is not the only issue young people are coping with online. Predators are constantly at work trying to trap kids into engaging in sex, or in divulging photos of themselves in compromising situations.

Students in many U.S. high schools and middle schools will soon be walking by FBI posters warning them of certain types of activities that begin on their smartphones, computers, and game consoles.

“The goal of our Stop Sextortion campaign is to alert young people to one of the risks that they can encounter online,” Supervisory Special Agent Brian Herrick, assistant chief of the FBI’s Violent Crime Section said Thursday. “Both youth and caregivers need to understand that a sexual predator can victimize children or teens in their own homes through the devices they use for gaming, homework, and communicating with friends.”

Sextortion begins when a predator reaches out to a young person over a game, app, or social media account. Through deception, manipulation, money and gifts, or threats, the predator convinces the young person to produce an explicit video or image. When the young person starts to resist requests to make more images, the criminal will use threats of harm or exposure of the early images to pressure the child to continue producing content.

“These predators are really good at targeting youth,” said Special Agent Kiffa Shirley in the FBI’s Billings Resident Agency in Montana (part of the Salt Lake City Field Office). Shirley recently investigated a case where the criminal offered money in exchange for explicit images from teens. That man, Tyler Daniel Emineth, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his crimes.

“Young people don’t seem to have an on-guard mentality when it comes to strangers contacting them through the Internet,” said Shirley. “And many teens feel less inhibited about sharing online.”

That sense of trust and comfort allows a criminal to coerce a young person into creating and sending an image, which begins the cycle of victimization.

The Stop Sextortion campaign seeks to inform students of the crime so they know how to avoid risky situations online and know to ask for help if they are being victimized.