Dr. Tijana Milosevic:

I would be careful about singling out any particular platform. We have seen an even increase across different types of platforms. We did a Covid study in collaboration with the joint research centre of the European Commission. Europe's Anti-Bullying Campaign did a study that we reported in our submission regarding cyberbullying patterns. We asked children if they had experienced it on different types of platforms. We see that the increase is evenly distributed so we do not see a spike in any particular platform. We must also be careful about how we talk about an increase and not undermine the importance of the issue of bullying and cyberbullying in any way. We see that this sharp increase during Covid is only visible for certain groups - at least in our study - for example, younger boys. We do not see that pattern evenly distributed but short sharp spikes so I cannot tell the Deputy that we need to pay attention to a specific platform. As Teams, Zoom and other platforms are being used for educational purposes, cyberbullying can slip in. I still do not have the qualitative research that our partners are doing where I would be able to give the Deputy specific examples of how this is happening during Covid on different platforms. Once we have that evidence, I will be able to provide the Deputy with it.

In terms of overall patterns, I just received the preliminary report from the study I mentioned, which shows that children in Ireland followed by children from Germany and Italy have seen the highest frequency of different types of meanness. Nasty or hurtful messages were sent to them, nasty or hurtful messages were passed around or they were excluded from group or activity on the Internet. Again, I do not have the data for specific platforms. I am saying that Irish children are among the top frequency numbers in Europe. That is worrying in and of itself but when we look at the specific platforms, I cannot say that we must pay attention to one platform. We must bring more attention to the better use of educational platforms for online schooling.