Any repeated act of physical or verbal violence, threat or intimidation perpetrated against a pupil by another pupil or a group of pupils on the grounds of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or physical or psychological difference is considered to be school harassment in France.
Between awareness of the alarming state of young people’s mental health in France since the COVID (20.8% of the 18-24 age group were affected by depression in 2021, compared with 11.7% in 2017 according to Santé Publique France) and the sad news (7% of primary school pupils and 12% of secondary school pupils are victims of bullying at least once a week according to an IFOP study), the issue of school bullying is front and centre.
Many public figures are now speaking out about the harassment they have experienced at school, allowing people to speak out and sharing their experiences on social networks.
And the good news (because talking about it helps us take action) is that we have never had so many conversations about bullying in the digital sphere as we do today.
Whereas World Anti-Bullying Day generated just 5k online conversations on 8-9-10 November 2022, this year there were 57.4k mentions over the same period in the digital space, showing the growing interest of the French in this cause.
Graph: Online mentions of ‘Harcèlement scolaire’ in the French-speaking world from 16 October 2022 to 16 November 2023
Faced with this scourge, politicians had no choice but to make bullying a major issue for 2023.
Spikes in conversation are also correlated with the various announcements made in 2023: from Gabriel Attal taking up his post as Minister for Education on 20 July, to the first inter-ministerial plan drawn up on Thursday 9 November dedicated to the fight against harassment in schools, not forgetting the examination of the 2024 budget (on the night of 3 to 4 November) dedicated to national education (30 million euros to the fight against harassment in schools were voted by the deputies).
And while social networks have enabled Internet users to speak out on this topical issue, creating online support spaces and raising awareness of the subject among as many people as possible, they have also made harassment more visible and easier to perpetuate by offering harassers a new channel for their violence outside the school walls, making victims even more vulnerable.
Spreading rumours, insults or threats, filming or photographing acts of violence and sharing them on social networks… Unfortunately, the functionalities offered by these platforms are often misused and have a devastating impact on victims. For these and many other reasons, cyberstalking is just as much a criminal offence as harassment.
As a result, the decisions now being taken to protect the youngest members of society online are getting tougher, both in Europe and in France: the law on digital majority passed in July aims to protect the youngest members of society from violent or pornographic content. It provides for a ban on access to social networks before the age of 15 (unless authorised by a parent) and a fine for platforms that fail to comply with the law (up to 1% of their annual turnover). And the Government wants to go even further by introducing a penalty of temporary ‘banishment’ from social networks for those responsible for cyberbullying.
In light of this news, some platforms are taking the initiative: at the beginning of November, some networks promoted their ‘rapid’ alert system and ‘easy’ access to the anti-harassment number.
On Instagram and Facebook, you need to report embarrassing content in the harassment section. You will then need to select the ‘hate and harassment’ section and go to a dedicated button at the end, which will then dial the anti-harassment number.
To make this long process easier, Méta offers a second solution: go to the post in question, open it and shake your smartphone. All you have to do is report spam, abuse or a technical problem.
On Tik Tok, access to this feature is not as easy: users have to go to the GPS to find it and go through the share button before being able to report content.
Unfortunately, reporting does not stop the harassment.
And once reported, the content still has to be deleted by the platforms. Then there’s the long road of content moderation by the platforms that has been so decried in recent months.
By Emilie Guignard
