SWEET AS SOCIAL MEDIA CHARITABLE TRUST
THE LAUNCH OF OUR NEW COMMUNITY
A WARENESS & E DUCATION P ROJECT
Volume 1, Issue 2 | May, 2011
Cyber Bullying.. could it be the elephant in
New Zealand’s classroom’s??
With recent news head-
lines regularly covering the
topic of bullying in schools
and among youth, it is sur-
prising we do not address
the issue of “cyber-bullying”
at all really, at least among
media anyway… Ongoing
reports have emphasized
and reinforced this apparent
ignorance , especially on the
behalves of many parents.
One report stated that some-
thing like 91% of kids, under
the age of 18, had at some
point or another been the victim
of “cyberbullying”. Yet shock-
ingly, only 11% of parents re-
ported to have ever heard the
term… In this day and age, it is
not enough for a parent to ig-
nore or avoid
conversations
about behavior
online when it
comes to their
“Bullied kids need to know that
bullies are cowards & that what
goes around, comes around.“
Deborah Coddington, NZ Herald (10.4.11)
Parenting in a Digital World: Kids & Social
Community courses will com-
mence this month, with the first
scheduled to be held on the
19th of May from 6.30pm—
8.30pm at Massey Community
House, 385 Don Buck Rd. Tick-
ets are priced at $25pp. We oper-
ate on a “Pay It Forward” system,
we aim to provide participants not
only materials through collaborate
with national providers of similar,
related or relevant content, such
as NetSafe & “Cool Schools” and
local businesses in each commu-
| Working in conjunction with AssistNZ Ltd
“In 2008, 1 in 3 Kiwi High School
kids.. And we need to re- Students reported to being cyber Plan of Attack:
bullied” - James Ihaka, NZ Herald
member, more than technol-
• Launch a viral YouTube cam-
ogy– what we are really talk- to directly experience the paign, where by we get NZ
ing about boils down to be pain inflicted on their victim. celebrities and public both to
just another way for kids & The virtual invasion of the be recording themselves read
script, edit the collection into
adults alike to communicate. home and spread of the tar-
several advertising campaigns
geting that these technolo- for radio & television and then
WHAT IS CYBER BULLY- gies allow is also signifi- pressure the media agency to
ING? Cyber Bullying is not cantly concerning. provide air time while still
pushing the message on social
unlike normal bullying, yet media streams - “Be Nice
instead of occurring just in Often outside of legal bounds Online” (see over page)
person, technologies & web- & difficult for the schools to Facilitate a workshop for par-
•
sites can now facilitate bully- manage, the ubiquitous na- ents around Auckland, starting
ing from a distance for some ture of these medias means first at our local community
venue in Massey, we have a
kids. Technology now means that the refuge of ones bed- series of workshops planned
that bullying not only occurs room even, is no longer safe around Auckland to build the
in the playground but after for kids today. Worst still, awareness & confidence of
parents & caregivers. Titled,
school and even sometimes what appears to be the most “Parenting in a Digital World:
into the bedroom with the commonly reported concern Kids & Social Media”, our two
child being victimized. by many, particularly those hour workshop aims to shift the
involved with the school, is focus & perception of parents
from the technology to the fact
WHAT MAKES CYBER the obliviousness of the par- its just a new way that their
BULLYING ANY DIFFER- ents about these issues in kids are talking.
ENT? There are a number many cases. • Standardizing and distributing
of reasons which seem to workshops & course resources
online is important to our ob-
make the context of Cyber
“Awareness & jectives of all participants
Bullying much more con- “Paying Forward” the lessons
cerning than traditional con- Education are the & message from our work-
cepts of bullies. Cyber bully- key preventions to shops with them. Further more
in-depth training may be done
ing is hard to escape, it can online by participants if they
also be anonymous & imper- cyber bullying” wish.
sonal and bullies don't have Bullying.org • Providing an online support
base and way for kids to con-
nect with each other and share
what works and what doesn’t—
using Facebook as they al-
ready use it, we plan to de-
velop an app (similar to re-
nity we operate, supporting sense hope to enable parents to feel cently released MTV app–
of community growth. better equipped to protect their Over the line?)
kids in this digital
In these courses, we provide a a g e . Limited
brief overview of the technologies spaces are avail-
& assess the level of confidence & able, register online
experience of the parents on each to secure your
course, before exploring the com- place today ..
mon risks and best strategies for
monitoring them in respectful & h t t p : / /
appropriate ways. We will explore www.youtube.com/
the most common issues of cyber user/sweetassocial
bullying, sexting, privacy and www.sweetassocialmedia.com WWW . SWEETSAS
downloads online and in the end, SOCIALMEDIA.COM
WHAT CAN YOU DO…
Whether you a parent trying to protect your
kids, or an individual trying to protect your
digital reputation, any concerted users should
be have set up an “alert” service. These ser-
vices are designed to “troll” the public scripts
running on popular sites like Facebook & Twit-
Helping Kiwi’s Navigate the Digital Migration
ter and sends you email updates when certain
search criteria come up on public and/or WE ARE LIVING IN A DIGITAL WORLD..
highly trafficked sights.
If you have teenage children especially, this Teenagers are currently those who both use these technologies
is most definitely advisable and should be most, unsurprisingly they are also the same ones who get them-
done for both their full name and handle. We selves into the most trouble online. Often they hide any issues
would even go so far as to suggest to some online from their parents for fear of having the use of technologies
parents, that getting their children's help do- removed from them or in some cases fear of parent making the is-
ing so in this process may in itself be benefi- sue “worse” (some parents have let it get to physical blows in front
cial. Firstly due to asking your kids for tips or of their children over cyber bullying issues and what message are
help online, despite what you may think, this we really sending then?). But when 98% of schools are connected
is an example of good digital parenting– while
and one fourth of babies have an online presence before they are
you may not understand the technologies they
born– we truly have got to the “digital native” generation.
are engaging on regularly, it is sensible to at
While the children have the better understanding of these tech-
least check them out and to your child you will
nologies, they aren’t equip with the emotional maturity to fathom
be taking an interest in their lives.
the consequences of these actions all together. If instead of doing
Secondly, the concept of having only their
cutting Kids off from technology when they get in trouble with it off,
most public and contentious posts displayed to
we need to be teaching them to be trust worthy with technology.
their parents, we expect for many kids, might
be all that is required before they make some
of these critical errors in judgement that could “The more that we use
potentially haunt them for life in some cases. taking the technology as a
We like Social Mention & Google Alerts our- punishment, the less that
selves, they are rather self explanatory but young people are likely to
you can find a write up on our Facebook page. talk to us about what's
going wrong” - Lee Chis-
http://socialmention.com/alerts
holm, Netsafe
http://www.google.com/alerts

“Be Nice Online” Viral Campaign

Three Kiwi kids have
taken their own lives
follow ing b u l l yi n g
online; Daniel Giles,
was 16 when he ended
his life in 2002. In 2006,
Alex Teka, a 12 year old
girl who was victimized
over cell phone also
took her own life, and
in 2008, 17 year old
Toran Henry did the
same.
Bullying has this year been
making headlines again, with
the schools being the ones
struggling most (from media
scrutiny at least). Yet we feel a
disproportionate number of
parents don’t feel comfortable
about talking to their kids about
technology. Especially when it
comes to issues like cyber bully-
ing & “sexting”.
we know many kids are not
telling parents when issues arise
& most of the time, parents have
no idea. We also know that
many children feel they must
suffer alone with these issues,
because they are scared of
having access to these tech-
nologies revoked. The idea of
parents using monitoring soft-
ware etc is redundant as the
one thing we know is that “digital
natives” will always know more
than us about these technolo-
gies.
But kids can be cruel. And
some-
thing
about
t h e
internet
really
plays to
t h a t
aspect
of youth.
But, like
m o s t
things, its a matter of balance &
we hope to get people talking
about this by using a viral cam-
paign on YouTube recently
launched, called “Be Nice
Online”.
Using a template type script we
hope to encourage a mixture of
high profile figures and general
New Zealanders recording &
uploading their own versions
(with “Be Nice Online” in the RECORD UR M8s, WHANAU, SELF, ANY1– READ-
titles). Once a collection has
ING THIS OUT AND UPLOAD TO YOUTUBE WITH
formed, we will be using the
various representations of New “be nice online” AS PART OF THE NAME, THEN
Zealand to make a edit & clip for POST US A LINK AND U’LL BE IN THE DRAW 4
TV & Radio campaigns to be run SUM EPIC PRIZES—SEE SITE FOR MORE... ^
later in the year.
This campaign was launched
with the sample video recording
OPEN: 10am—6pm Mon-Fri
from 6yr old Shizzi Bowden. She
helped us for the first video and sweetas@assistnz.com
now we launch the next phase
of our campaign with prizes for PO Box 79042,
entries!!! To get in the draw,
simply take a recording of you Royal Heights,
reading through the “script”,
upload to YouTube with “Be
WWW . SWEETSAS
Nice Online in the title and post
us a link on our site or YouTube
or Facebook pages to win:
www.youtube,com/user/
sweetassocial
SOCIALMEDIA.COM
www.facebook.com/pages/sweet-
as-social-media/