Report on the presentation of the Eurispes survey on cyberbullying in schools in Sardinia
It will end in March, and two months later, in May, the results will be known. The Eurispes survey on the spread of cyberbullying in schools in Sardinia was presented today in the presence of administrators, experts and school managers, all connected by videoconference.
The survey is still in progress and, according to the data collected in the meantime, is meeting initial expectations. Carried out thanks to the support of the Regional Department for Planning and Budget, the survey has been extended to 109 schools on the island, carefully identified according to type (1st or 2nd grade high schools) and geographical location.
“The survey is going ahead and with good participation,” said Gerolamo Balata, Director of the regional Eurispes office, “and this means that the actors involved have not been discouraged by the closure of schools or by distance learning. The numbers, quoted by Balata and the research team that took part in the presentation, confirm the positive impressions: currently almost 3,000 students, 1,117 adults and about 800 teachers have filled in the survey. This is a sign that the aims of the research do not leave the teaching staff indifferent and that they would like to find in the final results of the survey a useful tool to calibrate more incisive interventions to fight the phenomenon.
This is also the hope expressed by Fabio Tore, Head of Research and Innovation at the Regional Programming Centre, who stressed the importance of an effective synergic relationship between the Eurispes Institute, the Regional Department for Planning and Budgeting and the regional schools. “We deal with EU programmes and it is worth mentioning that those of the next seven-year period 2021-27 will be about sustainable growth and Next Generation Youth. This is where the importance of the new generations comes to the fore, and they must be supported against the many risk factors, including cyberbullying, where the negative aspects of human relations in an increasingly virtual world are concentrated. The phenomenon worries experts, schools and administrators alike.
Gianni Addis, Mayor of Tempio Pausania, stressed the role that social networks play in the lives of young people. “Their unconscious use,” he said, “is proof of how reality can be lost and how urgent it is to remedy this”.
Luisella Fenu, Deputy Public Prosecutor at the Juvenile Court of Sassari, also spoke of a false perception of the seriousness of the phenomenon among young people: “It is in the age group rightly identified for the survey, the one that goes from 11 to 18 years old, that there is a strong unawareness of the criminal consequences to which the practice of cyberbullying leads. I believe that the research may reveal a possible dramatic outcome due to the high presence of the phenomenon in middle schools today’. These are worrying words, because it would mean that cyberbullying becomes more insidious the younger the students get.
Given the seriousness of the phenomenon, for Giorgio Cicalò, director general of the regional department of education, what we are facing is “a real scourge that the resonance offered by new technologies makes much more problematic. This is why, once the results of the survey are known, it will be necessary to find the right tools to combat the phenomenon’. In her opening speech, Raffaella Saso, Deputy Director of Eurispes, outlined the contours of the phenomenon, recalling how the Institute has been observing its evolution since the 1990s, and how it has been present ever since the school world used to call what has more recently been defined as bullying prevarication. “The nature of the phenomenon tends to change and it becomes difficult to combat it, as it increasingly involves young girls. The type of victim varies, as do the expressions of the phenomenon, ranging from the spreading of slander to underhand exclusion from social groups. The new technologies, which should not be demonised, have inevitably had a disruptive impact’. According to Maria Giovanna Pisanu, judge at the Juvenile Court of Cagliari, schools and, in particular, families, which are not always able to be involved, should work together more effectively. We could be in the presence of the tip of an iceberg,” argued Francesco Greco, head of the regional Postal Police Department, “of which we are unaware of the real dimensions, as the many cases of young girls subjected to rather heavy insults and threats that find space on social networks and, in particular, through Telegram channels suggest.