“Big sow”: young people harassed on social networks from the age of six

Groups of bullies use social networks like Snapchat, Instagram or WhatsApp to attack increasingly young victims.

• Read also: “It’s a continent that escapes us”: the double lives of our children on social networks

Messages of harassment, death threats, and even incitement to suicide sometimes target children as young as first grade.

“I had cases involving a victim of harassment and intimidation who was 6 years old,” says Detective Sergeant Maya Alieh of the Montreal City Police Department.

A child was pushed to commit suicide during a WhatsApp challenge. To force her to commit increasingly dangerous actions, people threatened to attack her family.

“When I saw that the victim was 6 years old, I was in shock,” says the supervisor of the Cyberinvestigation module. “I asked: is it correct? And she was correct. She was taken to hospital. And my 2^e question was, why did she have WhatsApp?”

A mother sees red

The show I lift the veil on the double life of your children on social networks this evening at 8 p.m. on the TVA network.

“What we saw before in young people aged 18 to 25, we see today in young people aged 7 to 12. I really saw a change,” she continues. “They have tablets in their hands from 3-4 years old, in kindergarten. In the first year, we start to do prevention regarding what happens online.

• Listen to the interview with journalist Denis Therriault on Alexandre Dubé’s microphone via QUB :

The mother of a 10-year-old girl said she saw red when she caught her daughter being harassed online by a group of friends.

“For two days I felt like she was running away from me. Then one evening I came into his room. I asked my daughter, what are you doing, who are you talking to. She was on Snapchat. She said I don’t want to talk to you about it. It will sort itself out. I said no, no, no.”

The mother picked up the phone and saw the title of the discussion group which bore her daughter’s first name: Ophélie the whore.

“There were messages, like ‘you think so-and-so is your friend, but that’s not true. He hates you. He is with you just because you have a trampoline”. “There is no one who loves you Ophélie. ‘You really are a big cow, a big sow’. These are horrible things.”

Fortunately for the girl, the bullying stopped after her mother intervened with the parents of the children in this group.

“As it was hidden, on Snapchat, she felt in a kind of bubble. “No one should know about it, because she feared it would turn against her,” concluded Ophélie’s mother.

Snapchat hideouts

Nellie Brière, a specialist in digital communications and social media, believes that parents have every interest in paying attention to what their children are doing on applications, particularly on Snapchat.

“Snapchat is the worst platform because of its hiding mechanisms. It’s a company that wanted to offer a way to access or transact illicit material in secret: it’s like the poorly lit black park where there are no police passing there, no passers-by, no person. Then no matter what happens, no one knows.”

• Listen to Yasmine Abdelfadel’s reaction via QUB :

Nellie Brière invites parents to take more interest in parental controls on platforms like Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok.

Detective Sergeant Alieh also reiterates the importance of retaining screenshots as evidence.

DETECT VICTIMS

Young victims of online bullying experience great distress because they do not see how they can get out of this situation.

“When these conflicts between young people degenerate, there can be harassment, death threats, invitations to kill each other. With cyberbullying, it goes on all the time. In the evening, at night. And we realize that parental control is not always there,” says Geneviève Lapierre, specialized educator at Académie les Estacades, a secondary school in Trois-Rivières.

Its main challenge: quickly detecting victims when they are at school.

“Often, it will be through the distress that we notice in our young people that we know. They will become sadder, more suspicious, watery-eyed. At the bell they will leave to try to meet as few people as possible. They will look back in the corridors. These are all behaviors of distrust that can appear.

The management of Académie les Estacades takes online bullying very seriously, regardless of whether it takes place during class time or at home.

Deputy director Jean-Pierre Veillette believes “we have to intervene because if we don’t intervene, if we don’t take action, if we don’t come up with solutions, it’s certain that there will be consequences. repercussions at school, on the student’s availability to follow the course, his presence in class and therefore ultimately on academic results.

Anti-troll kit

Officer Samuel Milot of the Trois-Rivières police department has been doing prevention full time for 4 years in around ten high schools.

“Young people evolve in a world that is different from ours. If you tell them: “Are you experiencing difficult situations on social networks? Give it up, close your accounts.” It does not work. It’s considered a bit like social suicide in the sense that for these young people it’s very important.”

Samuel Milot therefore created the anti-troll kit to help young victims of online harassment and intimidation. “Most young people will not talk about their situation, their problem. The kit is made for those who remain silent.”

The kit is available on the web. Victims will find there, among other things, advice on how to report. What to do next. How to deal with the bully. Resources to help victims. There is also a list of criminal charges that can be brought against perpetrators of online violence.