The dangerous side of cyber bullying

On Tuesday, the #arrestMosesKuria was trending on Twitter before it escalated to an even unfriendlier hashtag the following day as people reacted to the MPs call for villagers who had been recruited into the National Youth Service (NYS) to take up arms and kill those opposed to NYS projects.

Barely a week before that, Laura Akunga was on the receiving end on social media and blogs about her Sh10 million Land Cruiser gift to her husband.

Media personalities are no stranger to trolls and bullies with Daily Nation’s Njoki Chege, NTV’s Larry Madowo and Citizen’s Julie Gichuru, among others, having to deal with hate mail and insults on their online pages.

Even corporates are jumping on the bandwagon to push their product, directly contributing to the vice. When Capital FM’s Sharon Mundia got engaged, Bobby Mwirigi, who apparently had a well-known crush on her became famous overnight through #polekwaMwirigi.

The young man was the subject of public jokes with corporates pushing their products using the traction generated by the tag. KCB Group on their official page tweeted “We are engaged to you and you can be sure we will be by your side for better or for worse. ION @Mwirigi #KCBLovesYou”.

Unilever tweeted “@Mwirigi below is our product, we are recommending for you, it won’t leave you #PoleKwaMwirigi.” Kenya Airways tweeted “We aren’t engaged! cc @Mwirigi.”

Public ridicule

Public figures including CEOs, celebrities, heads of states, politicians and bloggers, among others, are constant subjects of public ridicule and face online bullies on a daily basis. Most have public relations managers to handle the content online, filter and respond to the nasty messages.

Phillip Mwaniki, a journalist with a local paper, has had his fair share of trolls (online bullies). Usually, it was about his work, though it sometimes went to the extreme with individuals trying to raise doubts about his academic qualifications.

“When it gets personal, away from my work, it is usually more difficult to deal with. Being in the media, you are an easy target especially for TV girls,” he says.

Being a seasoned journalist, he is able to cope with the stress this kind of bullying brings and knows when to fight back or just remain silent on an issue. “If you believe in yourself, they can only make noise, nothing more,” he explains.

However, online bullies are not just adults targeting high profile individuals. Children and teenagers, too, are bullies on cyberspace where they troll their peers. Tweets and comments on blogs and social media sites have led to depression and gone as far as to cause children to commit suicide.

Last year, a 19-year-old girl in Australia took her life after she received nasty messages on social media. This, unfortunately, has become more common in Western countries that have embraced the platforms for a longer period than in Kenya. But it is a trend that is growing rapidly.

Bullying for children is no longer limited to the playground. It, too, has gone digital. Children as young as five have regular access to mobile phones, laptops and PCs.

Despite age requirements on most social media sites, which is 13, they still have access to chat rooms, online gaming groups and messaging apps including WhatsApp. It is on these platforms that bullying has taken a new form.

Abusive messages

According to UK-based National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, cyberbullying comes in various forms including abusive, threatening and upsetting messages via text or on social media networks, sharing of embarrassing videos and images, setting up of hate sites or groups about a particular child, encouraging young people to self-harm, voting against someone in an abusive poll and “sexting” (sending explicit messages and pressuring children into sending sexual images or engaging in sexual conversations).

Last week, New Zealand passed the Harmful Digital Communications Bill as they seek to tame cyberbullying. The criminalisation of the act means that perpetrators face up to two years in jail while incitement to suicide will lead to three-years jail time.

New laws

According to the BBC, the Bill that was approved by their parliament last week is expected to come into effect this coming Monday.
“An agency will also be set up to work with firms like Facebook, Google and Twitter to remove the offending content. Tech companies will be expected to ask authors to remove a post before taking it down themselves if it has not been removed within 24 hours,” reads the BBC article.

In Kenya, in 2014, a Bill aimed at curbing the menace was proposed by the Office of Director of Public Prosecution. The Cybercrime and Computer related Crimes Bill 2014, included clauses that outlined the crime and respective punishment.

In section 18 of the bill, it states, “A person who wilfully, maliciously, and repeatedly uses a computer system including electronic communication to harass, intimidate or cause substantial emotional distress or anxiety to another person, makes a threat with the intent to place that person in reasonable fear for their safety or to a member of that person’s immediate family; communicate obscene, vulgar, profane, lewd, lascivious, or indecent language, picture or image; make any suggestion or proposal of an obscene nature; threaten any illegal or immoral act; take or distribute pictures or photographs of any person without his consent or knowledge; display or distribute information in a manner that substantially increases the risk of harm or violence to any other person, commits the offence of cyber stalking, is liable to a fine not exceeding Sh300,000 or imprisonment for three years or both.”

If the offence referred to involves a minor, the penalty is a fine not exceeding Sh500,000 or imprisonment for a term of ten years, or both.

Campaign against vice

Social media has been growing in presence globally. At the beginning of the year, Facebook had an estimated 1.35 billion users, WhatsApp had 700 million, Messenger had 500 million, Instagram was at 300 million while Twitter has a monthly usage of about 300 million.

As part of the campaign against cyberbullying, organisations including the NSPCC as well as IT security and research firm Kaspersky Lab have helplines and a portal respectively to help deal with the vice. According to the NCSPP, last year 4,500 young people talked to ChildLine about online bullying.

Kaspersky has launched a new interactive portal dubbed Words Can Save that contains information about the issue and guides parents through indirect signs of cyberbullying in their children.

The wordscansave.me is geared at parents to help them understand the importance of keeping a close eye on their children and their behaviour.

Affected children become withdrawn and secretive, their schoolwork suffers and they may become aggressive, depressed or even prone to self-harm. “Words – sincere words of love and support – can help. This is the main point that we want to make in our fight against cyberbullying. And this is not just our opinion: it is shared by many psychologists worldwide who are involved in our campaign.

Cyberbullying exists wherever there is Internet access – and this means no less than the entire globe. So, we want parents across the world to know how to properly handle this problem,” says Alexander Erofeev, chief marketing officer at Kaspersky Lab.

Children, says Dr Gladys Mwiti, a clinical psychologist and chairperson of Kenya Psychological Association, have the capacity to make online bullying real. Most parents would generally ignore online bullies as harmless, but the effect on children is the same as physical bullying.

“It lowers the child’s esteem and self-worth giving them negative thinking and self-perception,” she says. As the children internalise and dwell on the issue, it takes away their energy and ability to be spontaneous.

“The child will ruminate and you will find that they can no longer focus on what they should because all the energy is on the comments made by the bullies. What starts as stress turns into anger and finally depression,” she explains. This, in effect, leads to a personality shift in the child.

Poisonous information

Once your child reports a case of trolling or cyberbullying, do not ignore the matter. Dr Mwiti advises that the first thing that a parent needs to do is delink the child from the online platforms. This gets them away from the poisonous information stream and takes away the rumination.

Secondly, the parent should engage the child in activities that they enjoy doing and will make them feel worthy. This could be art, music, or anything enjoyable for the child. Once this is done, the parent should socialise the child with families that hold similar values to theirs. And for children who are showing extreme symptoms, seek professional help from a counsellor or a psychologist.

“Cyberbullying is a complex issue that requires a multi-faceted approach. A strategy to support the child’s emotional state is very important. In the short-term, there are practical tips to help a child through the worst moments in a positive way without resorting to actions that may exacerbate the problem.

“The long-term objective is to help build the child’s resilience, enabling them to cope with problematic social experiences without psychological harm. But the first and most important step is for the parent to gain the child’s trust so the burden can be shared and, together, they can work on developing a plan of action to deal with the situation,” says Caron Mullen, a cyber psychologist.