LITERATURE REVIEW

In this review, I will be researching what is already known about Cyberbullying and the
affect it has on children aged 8 to 12.

A BBC Newsround article claims that one in five aged 10 to 12-year olds have been bullied
on social media. This was the result of a survey carried out by Newsround, which found that
78% of children in this age group had a social media account. However, we cannot take this
data as fact, as there are a lot of variables they didn’t mention in the article. For example,
how many children were asked and at which age were children most affected by
cyberbullying. The data could give us some insight into the amount of online bulling that
may occur at that age. Although, seeing as the article was posted in February of 2016, the
information is likely to be outdated, due to constant changing of the internet.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/35523769

According to the NSPCC, one in five 8 to 11-year olds and seven in ten 12 to 15-year olds
have a social media profile. This data contradicts the statistics presented in the Newsround
article. However, the NSPCC is likely to have more valid data, as they are a charity that is
specifically designed to protect children, which includes from bulling online. Their statistics
were also sourced from a company called Ofcom, who are the UK’s communications
regulator. Meaning their data could be considered more reliable, as they are in charge of
regulating TV, radio, fixed line telecoms, mobiles and postal services. The NSPCC also don’t
claim to know more than they do, as they openly say at the top of the page that “we don’t
know how many children and young people are affected by online abuse.” Although their
data could become more reliable if they were to carry out their own primary research, for
example, through a survey.

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/child-abuse-and-neglect/online-abuse/facts-
statistics/

https://www.ofcom.org.uk

A website called Internet Matters lists some of the issues that may be affecting children
online, with one of them being cyberbullying. They claim that a study done by the
Department for Education found that 11% of 15-16-year olds had experienced
cyberbullying. Although they have shown the percentage of boys and girls individually we
are unable to take this as fact due to the survey being completed in 2015, making the results
outdated. Despite this, Internet Matters does provide a lot of data and statistics for
cyberbullying on their website. However, due to the fact they are sponsored by major
internet companies such as BT and Virgin Media, it may result in their data and information
being more biased.

https://www.internetmatters.org/issues/cyberbullying/learn-about-it/

I also looked at an academic paper from the British Library EThOS Online, which researched
bulling and cyberbullying in a secondary school. These types of sources are more reliable, as
they have to do a copious amount of research into the topic and their results have to be fact
checked, unlike sources like the BBC. Despite this I found that this particular paper wasn’t
particularly helpful to my research as it focused on children who were above the target
audience we are focusing on. Also, this paper was awarded in 2012, meaning it is incredibly
out of date considering the speed at which the internet can and has developed.

http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?did=10&uin=uk.bl.ethos.571244