Our friends at leading cyberbullying organisation Cybersmile have teamed up with Instagram to launch The Banter or Bullying? No Offence report. They have launched both the report and a creative campaign as part of Anti-Bullying Week.
The Banter or Bullying? No Offence report examines the nature of offence and where young people draw the line in 2020.
The report is based on a poll of 3,003 thirteen to eighteen-year-olds from across the U.K. designed to better understand young people’s personal boundaries, the use of primers such as ‘no offence but…’ and teenager’s ability to identify bullying masked as banter. The poll also explored how young people feel about communicating openly with friends and family when lines become crossed and personal boundaries breached.
The Banter or Bullying? No Offence report is really important as it gives an insight into how young peoples use of social media has changed over the past year, and how young people are becoming more self-aware about their own personal boundaries when interacting online.
Cybersmile and Instagram are committed to leading the fight against online bullying. Instagram recently announced updates to its suite of anti-bullying tools to include an expansion of the Comment Warning feature, which warns people when they repeatedly try to post potentially offensive comments, and a new AI tool which automatically hides comments similar to those frequently reported for bullying.
They have also launched a series of interactive educational modules:’ Using Instagram’s Safety Tools,’ ‘Getting the most from Instagram’ and ‘Dealing with Bullying on Instagram,’ all designed to help people get the most from Instagram and educate them on the best way to make use of the safety tools available to them.
The new modules serve U.S. and U.K. English language versions depending on the user’s location and have been integrated into Cybersmile’s open source education program and interactive learning platform, which provides completely free education for everybody in key areas such as Digital Civility, Content Authenticity, LGBT & Gender Awareness, Online Safety and more.
You can read the full Banter or Bullying? No Offence report here and find out more about the amazing work Cybersmile does here.