• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

NetFamilyNews.org

Kid tech intel for everybody

Show Search
Hide Search
  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research
  • About NetFamilyNews.org
    • Supporters
    • Anne Collier’s Bio
    • Copyright
    • Privacy

The anonymity factor

August 18, 2013 By Anne 2 Comments

A sidebar to the first and second parts to what has turned out to be a series on digital bullying & self-harm:

Although anonymity has long been a source of safety, especially in political and human rights situations, it has been cited largely as a source of danger where teens and social media are concerned. Ask.fm, a social media that allows anonymous posting, figured prominently in early coverage of UK teen Hannah Smith’s suicide, and US teen Hannah Anderson was using the site to answer questions about her ordeal just two days after being rescued, the Christian Science Monitor reported.

John LeBlanc, MD, author of a study about cyberbullying and suicide wrote that allowing anonymity “may encourage cyberbullying. It is difficult to prove a cause and effect relationship, but I believe there is little justification for anonymity.”

So we need to know more about the anonymity factor, but here are some things we do know already:

  • About 10% of teens engage in anonymous self-harassment. That’s a finding in a 2011-’12 study by psychologist Elizabeth Englander at the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Research Center. It’s an average, because she found a higher proportion of boys (13%) than girls (8%) engaging in it. “About half of these “digital self-harmers” had done this only once or very infrequently; the other half reported that they had cyberbullied themselves more regularly or had one, ongoing episode which lasted at least several months.”
  • Anonymous cruelty offline too: Technology is “not uniquely capable of enabling anonymous bullying; school environments can do so as well,” Harvard’s Berkman Center reported in its comprehensive review of the bullying research last year. “In a national survey of over 1,000 12-17-year-olds, 12% who reported being bullied at school said they did not ‘know’ their bully, as did 22% of those who report being bullied on the way to and from school.”
  • Anonymity not that prevalent in cyberbullying. The Berkman lit  review also referred to a survey of more than 1,400 12-to-17-year-olds showing that “73% of participants who were victims of cyberbullying knew the identity of their bully.” The context of what happens between people online is not really a Web site or app; it is everyday life – for young people, what’s going on socially at school.
  • Anonymity decreases as kids age up. Another study by Dr. Englander found that, in 3rd grade, 72% of cyberbullying victims said they didn’t know who the bully was, but the percentage went down to 64% by 5th grade, a trend that “continues through high school.”

Young people aren’t using anonymity only for harm. They do their social and identity development work in social media as well as in offline life now, and they find safety in anonymity when they do (just as we did as teens, using other media and spaces). It’s good for adults to know that so they can help their children and students see that, by inviting comments or sharing struggles in public spaces online, they could be inviting cruelty as well as the constructive feedback they’re probably seeking.

“When teens are specifically taught that there are certain aspects of life that are better dealt with face to face – whether it’s asking someone out on a date or seeking help … after a traumatic experience – they are receptive to it,” the Christian Science Monitor cites Elizabeth Englander as saying.

Related links

  • Great help for schools dealing with cyberbullying from Nancy Willard of Embrace Civility: “Positive Relations @ School: A Comprehensive Framework to Reduce Peer Aggression & Limit its Harmful Effects in the Digital Age”
  • “We need to work out the social norms of social media: Why”
Share Button

Filed Under: Risk & Safety Tagged With: Berkman Center, Elizabeth Englander, Hannah Anderson, Hannah Smith, Harvard, John LeBlanc, Nancy Willard

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. How Yik Yak is different from other social media - NetFamilyNews.org | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    March 25, 2014 at 1:43 pm

    […] “The anonymity factor” […]

    Reply
  2. UK children's ChildLine: Read the coverage carefully | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    January 11, 2014 at 3:47 pm

    […] More reasons why it’s not helpful to take things at face value (on either side of the Atlantic): “Reflexive responses to digital bullying & self-harm not helpful,” “UK’s teen suicide tragedy: Problems, solutions” and “The anonymity factor“ […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

NFN in your in-box:

Anne Collier


Bio and my...
2016 TEDx Talk on
the heart of digital citizenship

Subscribe to my
RSS feed
Follow me on Twitter or even better:
NEW: Follow me on MASTODON!
Friend me on Facebook
See me on YouTube

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

Categories

Recent Posts

  • Supporting the youngest witnesses of this humanitarian crisis
  • Should our kids learn how to use generative AI? Well…
  • The missing piece in US child online safety law
  • Generative AI: July 2023 freeze frame
  • Threads: The new social media kid
  • Surgeon general’s advisory: Let’s take stock
  • Lawmakers, controlling and banning kids doesn’t help
  • New clarity on child sexual exploitation online

Footer

Welcome to NetFamilyNews!

Founded as a nonprofit public service in 1999, NetFamilyNews quickly became the “community newspaper” of a vital interest community of subscribers in more than 50 countries. Site and newsletter became a blog in the early 2000s. Nowadays, you can subscribe in the box to the right to receive articles in your in-box as they're posted – or look for toots on Mastodon or posts on our Facebook page, LinkedIn and Medium.com. She welcomes your comments, follows and shares!

Categories

  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research

ABOUT

  • About NFN
  • Supporters
  • Anne Collier’s Bio
  • Copyright
  • Privacy

Search

Subscribe



THANKS TO NETFAMILYNEWS.ORG's SUPPORTER HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM.
Copyright © 2023 ANNE COLLIER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.