Teachers' leaders urge networking sites to tackle cyber bullying

Published on Wednesday 26 December 2007 09:55

TEACHING leaders called on website owners today to do more to combat cyber-bullying.

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) said it is becoming "increasingly concerned" about the growing amount of malicious blogs and video clips of pupils and teachers appearing on file-sharing and social networking sites.

The union said the material can have a devastating effect on individuals' mental health and careers.

It is now calling on the owners of well-known websites to practise greater self-regulation over the type of material they allow to be published.

EIS general secretary Ronnie Smith said: "We have observed an ever-increasing number of incidents involving material such as malicious comments, secretly-taken photographs or video clips being posted.

"This is unacceptable behaviour from those posting these materials, but also represents a failure of those hosting websites to exercise effective editorial control."

He agreed that the internet is a valuable educational tool, but said one flaw was its potential to be used for malevolent purposes.

"It seems not a week goes by without a report of a malicious blog posting aimed at a teacher or a video clip of a pupil being bullied being posted," Mr Smith said.