The Mail today claims that facebook and twitter 'fuel' cyberbullying. While cyberbullying is a serious problem and sad reality [apart from when Guido does it!], I would argue that these sites do not fuel it. Yes they offer the cowardly bully a medium through which they can torment, but to accuse them of promoting it is simply to shoot the messenger.
The much more serious point here is that 50% of mental health problems begin in children under the age of 14 years and that will certainly rise if we don't take responsibility for protecting children while using this great software. There have already been tragic cases of suicide after experiences of cyberbullying. I would suggest there are three significant contributors to this neglect of responsibility.
Firstly many [most?] parents don't or don't know how to set security & privacy settings for their children's computers, mobiles or social networking sites [which have an age limit of 13 years anyway]. The recent cybersurvey undertaken by Mr Manning at his school revealed a scandalous level of neglect by parents in this domain, both in the unlimited terms of access and time [more on that another post - and there is another clue to obesity in there too]. Whether through ignorance, weakness or deliberate some of this is another consequence of the undermining of parenting by Labour.
Secondly, children are not taught how to be safe online when they use IT - surely this should a basic priority for teachers in the primary school PHSE curriculum. And lastly kids themselves need to behave responsibly, although a large part of this is having the emotional intelligence to be able to block unwanted calls and 'friends', and that often depends on whether their parents have bothered to instil it.
Picking up the pieces is unsustainable - psychiatry colleagues are currently being told to find cuts in their mental health service provisions. We need to start somewhere, so how about a high profile campaign led by the likes of the Sun, Mirror and Mail with cut-out 20 things to make your home pc safe along with a school-centred awareness campaign that kid's mental wellbeing is at stake paid for by the software/networking companies. What a great chance to demonstrate their CSR! Now, who's ready to get this one going?