Knowing the Face of a User
The majority of Park High Students use Social Networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and MSN. But do students always know who they are speaking to? Are the people behind the screens intentions as innocent as they seem? 
This relates to the recent story of 17 year old Ashleigh Hall being murdered through the use of Facebook, as she didn’t know Peter Chapman, who posed as a teenager, was a criminal. However, it’s not just these big tragic cases, which are a cause for concern, there are many incidents of school related bullying going on, which have a daily impact on students’ lives.
Our research team found that some Park High pupils are using these sites as a way of bullying others. We have been surveying Park High students from ages 12 to 16 to find out what is really going on. Our questions were designed to find out if students had had negative experiences of social networking sites. Here is what we found:
50% of the students, who were surveyed said that they use social networking sites everyday. 20% told us they spend four to six hours on social networking sites everyday and 30% of these students have experienced bullying on social networks. Most of these pupils said that Facebook was where they were getting bullied. Furthermore, 60% of these students thought that these sites didn’t provide enough security for their profile, therefore they felt these social networking sites are just not safe.
We also interviewed a number of students to find out their experiences of bullying.
One student told us:
“They called me names, they left me out, they were rude and mean. They falsely accused me of being responsible for everything. Knowing this made me feel empty and forced me to stop using MSN. They also wrote on my wall, so that other people from my school added to it and made me feel even worse. Eventually my parents found out and everything was resolved. Through this I have learnt
that there must be so many other people who haven’t found a solution”.
that there must be so many other people who haven’t found a solution”.
Another pupil explained:
“When I was in year 8 there was a group of girls who were bullying me on Facebook they were back stabbing, they were ganging up on me at school. It came to a point where I started to cry and I didn’t have any friends. I was really scared. Online they called me names they shouted at me and said I wasn’t a good friend.”
It certainly seems that students at Park High should take more responsibility for reporting any bullying they notice on social networking sites. Once they are reported, bullies could be banned from such networking sites to prevent them from victimizing other students in the future. This is certainly something which the teachers take very seriously. In PSHE last term, Year 8 worked on staying safe and explored in detail the issues of staying safe on the internet.
By Ami and Avni