What is “griefing”? If you don’t know you’re probably over 21. The deliberate sabotage of a person’s character or progress in an online game, it can be used as a subtle form of bullying.
Sometimes, the subtlety is missing. “There’s this group of people I play with online and they told me to kill myself,” one girl quoted in a new report from Children in Scotland (CiS) said.
Online gaming is just one emerging area where the digital world is proving as perilous as the real one for our young people.
In many ways, they no longer perceive the difference. As with more traditional bullying, the onus is on adults to understand and make it easier for young people to talk about such problems. But the report quotes statistics showing fewer than half of bullied young people had told their parents about their experiences.
One reason was that too many had experienced speaking out and seeing nothing done, or worse, being targeted thereafter.
Many schools have made great strides towards changing the culture, creating an educational environment where bullying is not tolerated. The report is positive about the effect this has had.
But the scale and the range of victimisation highlighted by CiS and the damaging impact it is having on children will provide food for thought for the Scottish Parliament Equality Committee – and for many parents too.
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