KEY POINTS:
Many young people keep quiet about online bullying for fear they will not be allowed to keep using computers, says a bullying expert.
Dr Shaheen Shariff, who leads an international cyber-bullying project from McGill University in Montreal, said more than half of young people with internet access would encounter online bullying as a victim, a perpetrator or a bystander.
But almost two thirds admitted they would not report it because they feared losing computer privileges.
Most children thought there was nothing adults could do to help anyway, said Dr Shariff, who was in Queenstown this week to speak at a Netsafe online safety conference.
Microsoft Asia Pacific's director of internet safety and security, Julie Inman Grant, , said Australian research suggested a quarter of internet surfing kids would be cyber-bullied, and two-thirds would know someone who had been bullied.
Most parents were aware of the problem, but did not know what to do about it.
Netsafe executive director Martin Cocker said the traditional response was to take away the technology to keep the child safe.
But this approach merely punished the victim.
Mr Cocker said parents should talk to their children about what they did online so that children could tell them when something went wrong. Many young people were worried their parents would make the bullying worse by their reaction, he said.
"If your child does tell you something has happened, stay calm ... It can be quite emotionally moving for the parent, to hear that their child is being targeted."
Sixteen-year-old Hannah Lobb, who was a delegate at this year's International Youth Advisory Congress (IYAC) on online safety and security, told the conference the anonymous nature of much online bullying made it harder for victims to report. Often it was a way for ordinary bullies to continue harassing their victims at home in the evenings.
Fellow IYAC delegate Chris Osborne said banning social networking sites, where a lot of cyber-bullying takes place, would drive the problem underground. Many students could get around blocking filters, or use the sites from a home computer, and victims would be less likely to report bullying if they had broken the rules to get online.
Dr Shariff warned legislation does not solve the power imbalances and behavioural patterns that lead to bullying in the first place.
She said New Zealand cyber safety groups were already working well with the Government, police and schools to develop support and awareness of cyber-bullying, putting us well ahead of countries such as the United States and United Kingdom.
VICTIMS WHO AID THE ABUSERS
New Zealand children as young as 12 are willingly sending inappropriate images of themselves to adults contacted through the internet, a conference has been told.
An internet safety conference in Queenstown this week discussing "complicit victims" was told of a 15-year-old girl who sent 300 photos of herself to an internet "boyfriend" she had never met.
He passed on the images to others.
"These children are very savvy about the technology ... but have no idea about the impact their actions could have on their lives when they are 25," NetSafe operations manager Lee Chisholm told the conference.
Children who had been sexually abused were most vulnerable to becoming "complicit victims".
American psychologist and associate professor of early childhood education at the University of South Florida Ilene Berson said about 95 per cent of sex crimes in the United States were "non-forceable" - the young person knowing in advance the intention of a "real world" meeting with their abuser.
"They do not have the capacity to think through their actions thoughtfully ... they're impulsive," Prof Berson said.
Free advice on children's internet safety was available on 0508NETSAFE.
- NZPA
