Mr. Philip Arneill:

The first thing is that we cannot say we do not understand the technology.

We have to stop making this excuse. We hear many parents say, "Oh, I do not know what they are doing." There are sites like Webwise and Common Sense Media, and lots of other resources where people can figure out very quickly exactly what TikTok does or what people can do or not do on Snapchat. The first thing is to go and do that research, and understand what kids are doing. Parents have to take that interest because it is a big part of their children's life.

Second, we have to stop making this distinction between what we often refer to as the real world and the online world. For children and young people, the online world is part of their real world. By making that distinction, we are sometimes giving licence to certain kinds of behaviour in the online world that we would not accept in the offline world. By breaking down that distinction and really pushing the kind of behaviour we want, generally speaking, from young people and children, and from society as a whole, it is a really powerful way to tackle that. What often happens is that kids are doing things online that they do not necessarily realise are the same as walking up to someone and insulting them to their face, or saying something to them they simply would not have the guts to say in person. The second thing is to break down this distinction and stop somehow othering the online world as if it is some other place where different rules apply.

Third, a big part of this is empathy and understanding how people feel, whether it is online or offline, and developing those skills within our young people. Fourth, within schools in particular, it is about modelling that culture. This comes from the top down. I know from working in schools that we are talking to children about bullying and cyber bullying and, at the same time, the head may be bullying members of staff and not necessarily modelling that behaviour we expect from the kids. Within a culture, within an organisation, we need to understand what the signs of bullying or cyber bullying are, and we then have to make sure that all of us, whether it is from the top down or the bottom up, are modelling that desired behaviour. That will be much more effective. It is too easy to just blame the technology. We have to tackle it at the root of the behaviours that we want from each other and that we expect to see.