Safebook

Anti-Cyberbullying Campaign

Anti Social Media Behaviour Group: Heather Henry, Kate Kavanagh, Vivienne Hill, Emma Keady, Isabel Keane, Sarah McGinn, Sophie Mullarkey & Hanora Pamplin with IT Teacher Mr. Fogarty and Joanne Sweeney Burke & Jillian O’Toole of Digital Training Institute. Photo by John McDonnell.

Safebook

Safebook is the anti-cyberbullying campaign set up by Salerno’s TY students.

We felt it was important to raise awareness on the topic of anti-cyberbullying and this project was the perfect way to do that.

Cyberbullying is a very prevalent issue in today’s society, especially among teenagers.

Cyber bullying is the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature. Lots of teenagers today have access to many different social media sites and are very involved with them which makes it easy to bully someone online. Some examples include facebook, twitter and ask fm.

Cyberbullying

Cyber bullying can have an adverse effect on teenager’s lives. Many teenagers may take what is said online seriously and as many sites offer anonymity people feel as though they can say whatever they want online.

We feel that cyber bullying is an unnecessary part of social media and while it may not ever be stopped completely, we can raise awareness of the dangerous effects cyber bullying can have.

Survey

We made a survey to give to students in first and third year.

The survey consisted of 5 questions regarding cyberbullying and their use of social media.

The survey asked what social media networks they thought cyberbullying occurred on and if they had any personal experiences with cyberbullying.

Survey Results

The results our survey showed that:

• Students thought cyberbullying happened most frequently on ask.fm and Facebook.

• Many students knew someone in Salerno who was being given abuse online and some students knew someone who had contacted the guards after being harassed online.

• Over half of the students surveyed said they have stood up for someone who had been bullied online.

Our Campaign

In November we planned a visit to the first year classes in Salerno. We planned to discuss the topic of anti-social media behaviour and online safety.

We informed them on the dangers of cyber bullying and the importance of being safe online. We talked about recent cases of online bullying that were discussed in the media.

We also held a competition between all the first year classes to create a name for our anti-cyber bullying campaign. We advertised this and gave them a week to create a name, with a prize for the winner.

Our Campaign

We decided that we needed to advertise our anti-bullying campaign and promote online safety. To advertise our campaign we set up a facebook ‘like’ page and a twitter account, under the username “Safebook”.

Creating Awareness

We learned that from seeing websites like Facebook, Twitter,Youtube, they all have their distinctive logo colour which make them recognisable. We decided to come up with our own original logo design and color to help people recognise our campaign at a glance.

Posters of our logo and information were printed and hung around the school building to publicize our campaign.

Final Thoughts

Coming to the end of this module and campaign we hope that we have raised awareness of cyberbullying and encouraged students to be safe online.

This module has taught us how to be safe online which was educational as well as fun. We learned a lot about social media sites and enjoyed teaching others how to be respectful online.

It was very interesting to receive the surveys from the younger years on their online experiences. Trying to help was one of the biggest difficulties we faced but our facebook page ‘safebook’ has given us a massive sense of achievement. The younger years now know we are approachable about any online difficult situations they may be experiencing.