A children’s charity, NCH, has found that one in four kids get harassing emails or text messages. Nasty for those involved but perhaps a little over-blown as a threat since as far as I could find the survey doesn’t attempt to determine the severity of the emails.
If you are being bullied offline it wouldn’t be surprising if the same person sent you threatening text messages as well, but I don’t suppose it is any worse than actually being thumped. Being cyberstalked by someone whose identity you don’t know on the other hand can be scary indeed…
The report in The Guardian newspaper
The NCH’s press release (which doesn’t give any more detailed info on the survey)
The NCH’s website about kids and online issues.time 1st buyer loansloan online advanceloan 2 calculator mortgagecommercial property loans 100200 loanrefinance mortgage 2nd loanlink 28 payday loannon accrual loanamerican loan html generalmobile 0 down home loan
I wonder how they could ever get reliable statistics on this, but I’m not surprised in any case.
Not so many years ago, I was around the pre-teen stage. At that age kids scream at each other at recess, pass nasty notes, make prank phone calls and cast dark glares across the classroom. It doesn’t surprise me that the internet has become another method of peer cruelty.
I have spoken to a few 13 year olds who talk about spending most of their time online on IM programs ‘fighting’ with friends and ‘enemies’. They’ll ‘scream’ at each other for awhile and then hit Ignore.
ahh, the joys of childhood
-al
Comment by Allison — 22 April 2002 @ 5:31 pm