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ABSTRACT
There is a paucity of research that examines the effectiveness of social media companies’ anti-bullying tools from the children’s perspective. This article relies on two datasets from Norway: A small-scale exploratory survey and focus groups with children at one school in Norway; and the EU Kids Online survey with a nationally representative sample of Norwegian Internet-using children, to examine whether children and young people aged 9–19 are aware of and whether they use social media companies’ mechanisms against cyberbullying (e.g., various types of reporting, blocking, and companies’ safety and help centers). We also examine the extent to which children find these tools to be helpful and the underlying reasons for such perceptions of the effectiveness of social media companies’ mechanisms. The study further inquires into children’s perceptions of company responsibility for providing assistance in bullying incidents. While the majority of children in both samples know how to use basic tools such as reporting, the levels of awareness of various companies’ advanced tools as well as the use of these, are relatively low. Children also have mixed perceptions as to whether companies are able to assist. Results are discussed from the framework of children’s rights, offering policy recommendations.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Supplementary Material
Supplemental data of this article can be accessed here.
Notes
1. Provided that they do not have “actual knowledge” of illegal content on their services, see Directive 2000/31/EC.
2. Conducted within self-regulatory initiatives of the European Commission.
4. χ2 (1, N = 94) = 3.254, p < 0.1.
5. z = −1.78 and p = 0.076.
6. Statistically significant differences in mean age at the 0.05 level. Significance calculated by the usage of ANOVA post hoc tests.
7. Statistically significant differences in proportions at the 0.05 level. Significance calculated by the usage of “N-1” Chi-squared test (Campbell, Citation2007; Richardson, Citation2011).
8. χ2 (1, N= 21) = 0.064, p = ns. Due to low expected observations in two cells, Fisher’s Exact Test was applied instead of the regular Pearson Chi-Square test.
9. Due to low expected observations in one cell, Fisher’s Exact Test was applied instead of regular Pearson Chi-Square test.
10. Due to low expected observations in one cell, Fisher’s Exact Test was applied instead of regular Pearson Chi-Square test.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Tijana Milosevic
Dr. Tijana Milosevic is a postdoctoral researcher at The National Anti-Bullying Research and Resource Center, Dublin City University. She is the author of Protecting Children Online? Cyberbullying Policies of Social Media Companies (MIT Press, 2018). Tijana studies a range of topics related to social media and youth wellbeing, and her works have appeared in New Media & Society, International Journal of Communication and the Journal of Children and Media, among others. She has collected data for the EU Kids Online research network in Serbia and she is a managing editor of Springer’s International Journal of Bullying Prevention.
Marko Vladisavljevic
Marko Vladisavljevic is a researcher at the Institute of Economic Sciences, Belgrade, Serbia. He recently obtained a PhD in Econometrics from the Faculty of Economics, University of Belgrade. During his career he worked as a consultant for the World Bank, ILO and UN and has received numerous scholarships for academic and applied research projects. His scientific interests cover a wide range of social phenomena including labor market, inequality, well-being and social psychology.
