Mr. Philip Arneill:

Good afternoon.

I will speak on behalf of CyberSafeKids, an online safety charity for children and parents. As an organisation, we recognise the Internet is a powerful and educational resource. This has never been more apparent than over the last year during periods of strict lockdown. The Internet also brings with it risks, particularly for children. My opening statement will focus specifically on cyberbullying.

Cyberbullying overlaps in many ways with traditional bullying, in that there is clear intention to cause harm, it is deliberately targeted and there is an imbalance of power. One common definition of cyberbullying is "an aggressive act or behaviour that is carried out using electronic devices repeatedly against a victim who cannot easily defend him or herself."

Several key differences between cyberbullying and the more traditional forms of bullying are, first, cyberbullying takes place through the Internet and online platforms such as popular social media apps and as such it can be perpetuated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Second, victims of cyberbullying are not necessarily exempt simply because they remove themselves from the online space. There is nothing to prevent the perpetrators continuing to create and post content online about their victims, regardless of whether that person is seeing it directly. Third, cyberbullying creates a permanent record of this behaviour through posts, comments, photos and videos left online. Even if this content is deleted from specific devices, the nature of the Internet is such that it is likely the content exists somewhere else, or has been screenshot, saved or downloaded by other users. Fourth, the online nature of cyberbullying easily facilitates anonymity for its perpetrators, who are not required to directly witness the reaction or impact the behaviour has on their victim, and is facilitated by the increasing amount of time children and young people are spending online.

Cyberbullying comes in myriad forms, the most common of which include posting nasty, hurtful comments and messages, excluding people from groups, threatening to share information about someone online and sending or posting non-consensual images of someone, among other forms. Cyberbullying can even be inclusion as well, such as the case of Charlotte in sixth class. She was excited to be invited to join a WhatsApp group of her peers, only to discover that the group was called "I Hate Charlotte" and had been created specifically to criticise and make fun of her. CyberSafeKids believes we must continue to address the issue of cyberbullying at the highest level, as this problem will only continue to evolve with the online world.

Research indicates that cyberbullying has life-changing, and even tragic consequences for children and young people, poses real and self-evident concerns and issues for parents and carers, and also creates significant challenges for teachers. According to our findings, 59% of teachers are increasingly dealing with incidents which, despite beginning outside school, have inevitable fallout that continues to reverberate within their classrooms.

Defining cyberbullying, identifying the symptoms early, teaching young people to stand up rather than stand by and modelling inclusive and tolerant environments within schools are all key approaches in tackling the increasingly pervasive problem of cyberbullying in schools.