This article is from page 4 of the 2014-02-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 4 JPG
CLARE parents are being urged to know who their children are friendly with online in order to reduce the potential for cyber bullying.
Leading forensic psychologist Dr Maureen Griffin says Facebook pages and other social media accounts can often be used by bullies to access information about young people.
“The huge difficulty with this is that it happens outside of schools. It happens in the evening at home, on phones, online and then it seeps back into school,” she said.
Dr Griffin was speaking in St Flannan’s College in Ennis on Wednesday night at an event organised by the parents association.
In a wide ranging lecture on social media and cyber-bullying, Dr Griffin, the founder for Internet Safety for Schools Ireland, said the most common form of bullying she has come across “are girls who will not bully individually but together in a group they bully”.
“The huge difficulty with this is that it happens outside of schools. It happens in the evening at home, on phones, online and then it seeps back into school.”
Dr Griffin, who lectures in the areas of mental health and crime, sexual offenders, online internet solicitation, says anonymous bullying can have an enormous impact on the victim.
She said, “They feel suspicious of everybody and because of that they become isolated not only online but also in the real world.”
Dr Griffin urged parents to know who their children are friends with online.
She highlighted the risks associ- ated with befriending anonymous Facebook accounts.
She recalled visiting an all girls school in Ireland where over 400 students had befriended an account set up in the name of a local road.
“The account was set up by a guy who lived in a different county, had previously served time in prison for sexual offences against adults. He did not contact them (students), did not send them nasty messages, he did not follow them in real life. He simply started collecting their pictures, pictures from teenage discos, pictures from girl’s sleepovers, pictures that were printed out and posted and edited onto other websites,” she said.
St Flannan’s teacher Pat Lynch echoed concerns expressed by Dr Griffin, urging parents to carefully monitor their children’s use of technology and the internet.
Mr Lynch told the meeting he had encountered instances of bullying in every of the 30 years he has spent teaching.
Mr Lynch, who teaches computer class to first year students, said the rise in cyber bullying is a “reason to be concerned”.
“Cyber bullying nearly always crosses over to physical bullying,” he added.
Mr Lynch warned of the dangers of allowing children unrestricted access to the internet in their own bedrooms. He said prolonged exposure to technology can affect student’s concentration, attitude and studies.