Irish MEP to host forum on cyber-bullying
A major national conference on cyber-bullying for parents, teachers, youth and community groups is to take place at the end of September, organised by Fine Gael MEP Sean Kelly.
The awareness-raising forum is part of a broader ongoing campaign by Mr Kelly for an EU and national level anti-bullying programme similar to the UK-based charity, Beat Bullying.
Mr Kelly, a former school teacher, has called for key stakeholders in education, government, commercial and youth sectors to join forces and roll out anti-bullying programmes in schools and youth groups.
“Bullying by social media is a problem of epidemic proportions, mostly affecting young people. In very real and shocking terms, over 1,700 young Europeans are at risk of death by suicide this year due to cyber-bullying. We can’t allow any more young people to be tortured in this way any more and we certainly don’t want any more lives lost tragically because of it,” said Mr Kelly.
The National Cyber-Bullying Forum will be held in Kilmurray Lodge Hotel in Limerick on September 27.
Cyber-bullying has already been blamed for a number of tragic suicides in Ireland and England, involving the controversial website ask.fm, which allows users to post comments anonymously online. The website has been linked to the deaths last year of 13-year-old Erin Gallagher from County Donegal and 15-year old Ciara Pugsley from County Leitrim. Parents of both girls have repeatedly called on the Irish government to ban the website in Ireland.
Just a few weeks ago, 14-year-old Hannah Smith from Leicestershire in the UK died after enduring months of online bullying on ask.fm.
In response to her death, the co-founders of the ask.fm website announced that they had completed an audit into safety features on the site and have added extra safety features aimed at curbing bullying. These include a more prominent “report button” on the site, a parents’ section, incentives to encourage users to register and more staff employed as site moderators.