ABSTRACT
(Excerpts from High wire act: Cyber-safety and the young 2014)
I think most children who cyber-bully don’t [sic] realise they are doing it, because it is hard to tell what tone something is written in … for example ‘nice pic’ could be being nice and giving a good comment or it could be sarcastic and be being mean and only the writer really knows which one, if they meant to be mean or if they were just being nice
(Female aged 14, p. 61)It depends on how certain teasing comments are taken. Some posts snowball as sometimes about a hundred people all contribute to a discussion which can sometimes include abuse of a person for the opinion they express … This sort of behaviour is not uncommon
(Female aged 17, pp. 61–62)My fourteen year old sister is frequently cyber-bullied over both the social networking site Facebook as well as Formspring, as are many of her friends and people she knows. It causes her a lot of distress, largely because she is unable to escape it. It affects her self-esteem and happiness
(Female aged 17, p. 79)