Cyberbullying On The Rise Claims Children’s Charity

Cyberbullying On The Rise Claims Children’s Charity: ChildLine, the charity founded by Esther Rantzen which deals with children’s issues via anonymous telephone calls, and online chat among other methods, has released figures which suggest the number of children contacting them in relation to suffering from cyberbullying is increasing. Indeed, the figures have almost doubled from 2,410 cases in 2011-2012, to 4,507 cases in 2012-2013. Figures also showed that the charity had seen a rise in issues relating to self-harming which is now also affecting children at a younger age – although depression and strained family relationships were the leading reasons young people sought help.

In the period 2012-13, ChildLine gave counselling services to 278,886 children and teenagers, with more counselling taking place online (59%) than via telephone (41%) for the first time in the 28 years in which the charity has been operating. In addition, ChildLine also handled 10,961 cases where a young person had raised concerns about another child.

Cyberbullying On The Rise Claims Children’s Charity

Cyberbullying On The Rise Claims Children’s Charity ChildLine

The report, titled ‘Can I Tell You Something?’, also noted a large increase in the extent of racist bullying, with more than 1,400 individuals experiencing problems as opposed to 861 the previous year. Common themes included children being referred to as ‘terrorists’ or ‘bombers’, or being told to ‘go back to where they came from’.

Perhaps most shockingly, almost 30,000 children mentioned that they felt suicidal, a rise on the previous year’s figure of 22,006.

These figures correlate with a recent report from the Prince’s Trust, which suggested that as many as three quarters of a million young people in the UK may feel like they have nothing to live for.

The Department for Education has stated that every school had to have measures in place to prevent cyberbullying by law. A spokeswoman for the DfE said: ‘Thanks to our new curriculum, children will soon be taught how to stay safe online, including cyberbullying, from the age of five. We have strengthened the powers teachers have to tackle bullying. They can search pupils for banned items, delete inappropriate images from phones and give out same-day detentions.”

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