The Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre presented the results of a survey on e-aggression at the Fifth International Conference “Keeping Children and Young People Safe Online” on 20-21 September 2011 in Warsaw. The online survey, which involved 213 school children aged 12 to 18, 33 parents and 1033 teachers, was designed to assess participants’ perception of youth aggression online.
The opt-in online surveys showed that the majority of young people with personal experience perceived sending and receiving mean electronic messages to be done mostly for amusement (up to 80 %) and less than 20% of them consider that the perpetrators were acting with malicious intent. More than half of the students admitted that they had done it to people they didn’t know with no intention to harm but to have fun.
Parents’ and teachers’ responses demonstrated that they have adequate perception of youth online culture with one notable exception – most of the adults underestimated how frequently students have targeted strangers.
The surveys demonstrated that most of the students don’t engage in an intentionally harmful behaviour. Even when they act mean, in the majority of cases the assault is perceived benign by both the victim and the perpetrator. It seems as a way for children to experiment “safely” with identities, norms and boundaries.
However, the perceived harmlessness of e-aggression might explain the inappropriately light-hearted attitude of adults towards serious cases of cyber-bullying. Furthermore, exposure to hostile humour could increase the overt aggressive behaviour among minors and even reinforce it. One possible remedy for this hate-for-fun online culture is to challenge the perceived harmlessness of e-aggression through awareness raising and increased commitment to positive social norms.
For details you can download the presentation here.
