I'm Professor Craig. I'm from Queen's University. I'm a child clinical developmental psychologist.
Much of what I'm going to say is to reinforce what's been said by my colleague.
I will start by saying that I primarily think about children and youth, and when we think about laws, there is a difference between children and youth and adults. One of the most important things I can send to you as a message is that children are a process in development. Think of your own children. Children need to learn how to behave differently. They need to learn those skills. They need to be coached by adults. They need scaffolding; they need education.
Punitive measures aren't going to provide that learning context that's going to give them the strategies to be different. I think we need to think about a different response for children and youth than we have for adults because of many of the developmental things that have been raised.
I also do research in the area of cyberbullying, and there are a couple of things in that area that make this legislation a bit problematic. We currently have no universally agreed upon definition in the area, although there has been work by the centre for disease control. I've been part of a task force to define it. There is no universally accepted definition. Part of the current definition uses intent to harm. That's a very hard and difficult thing to measure under a legal context. The current definitions are intent to harm, that there is a power imbalance, that an individual is repeatedly targeted. The more elements we have in a definition, the more the burden of proof is on the individuals who have to prosecute them to make that change.
We need a universal definition. We need to define each of the elements of that definition, such as intention to harm and harm. And we need to know when intimidation and humiliation cross the line into becoming a criminal behaviour problem. Those, I think, are very grey areas without a lot of information.
I want to talk a bit about the problem so that you understand what we're dealing with when we're building laws to address it. Let's look at the health behaviour survey—I'm part of the team—which surveys about 27,000 children. It is an across-the-country survey funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada, and it is nationally representative. If we look at the prevalence of cyber victimization—that is, what proportion of children report being cyber victimized—by grade 10, so at age 15, it's about 18% of children who report it, and 99% of those children who are victimized also are victimized in face-to-face bullying.
For me, the message there is that we need a comprehensive national strategy. That has been raised before in the House of Commons, and it is absolutely essential if we're to have an integrated approach to deal with it.
Approximately one in five children report being victimized by it, but it's one type of many types of victimization that they're experiencing, so we need to deal with it.
The other thing is, if you look at the research about what happens to kids online, about 43% of them say that in the last 30 days they've received an e-mail that upset them, they've received an instant message that upset them, they've been made fun of, they've had something posted on a website, they've had something posted online that they didn't want others to see, or they've been afraid to go to the computer. They don't define any of these acts as bullying, so how can we begin to define it when the kids themselves aren't clear on the definition? That's an educative process that requires a public health campaign through a national strategy.
We've done research looking at the perceived harmfulness of cyberbullying and electronic bullying. What did they say? Girls report it as being more harmful than boys do, and incidentally, girls are much more likely to perpetrate it than are boys. They do report it as being more harmful than physical bullying, but as harmful as verbal bullying as well.
So bullying in general is harmful. Cyberbullying is one form that is harmful, but then they don't report it to adults.
When you ask children what happens to them online, the majority of things that happen to them online are about threats and name calling. Very rarely is it the more extreme cases, such as inappropriate sexual behaviour or people pretending to be somebody different.
We also know that online and offline behaviours overlap. Both behaviours happen in social relationships. Both types of kids are involved in both. With cyberbullying, we have children who are also more likely to aggress and be victimized. That puts us in a dilemma, because if we think about a criminal perspective on these children, we're actually revictimizing them when they've actually found a way, although inappropriate, to try to establish some power in themselves.
We do know, however, that the psychological harm of cyber victimization is over and above the effects of cyberbullying. That is, it's more significant and more severe in terms of the severity of the depression or the severity of the anxiety they experience.
The other thing that's important is that we've also looked at who's doing the cyberbullying. Who's doing it to you? What we find is, no matter what type it is, whether it's name calling, threats, rumour, pictures, or even sexual things, it's most likely to be friends. It's happening to them by known identities. There's a very low prevalence that it's happening by strangers or someone they don't know. That's the least likely to be who's doing it. That says to me that it's a problematic way in which the kids are interacting, and we have to provide them with the support they need.
That's my other last point in terms of what we know from the research. We've also done research looking at the roles that kids play in cyberspace, how they contribute to cyberbullying. Kids report that the number one role they play is to go online and defend each other in some context. Girls are more likely to do that, although I should very clearly state that about 20% of them say they also go online and are similarly aggressive. That might also be an educational point. Children, as mentioned in the earlier testimony, are not aware, or do not define what they do as aggressive or behaviour with a criminal intent, with possible criminal consequences.
I have a couple of messages for you. One is that if we proceed with this, we need to have a legal definition of bullying and standards that can be supported when we enact that law. The second is that we need to have a consistent definition, and that definition has to be known to children, youth, and adults and be equally applied and be equally able to be applied across all of that. The third piece that we need in the legislation is an understanding about when we're crossing the line into criminal behaviour. When does humiliation and criminal intent occur?
The other thing we need to realize is that the majority—at least half of the youth, anyway—report that they don't tell adults about it. They're not reporting the incidents. We don't even know the true prevalence of it. They're not reporting it for fear of consequences. If we make it a legal problem, it becomes more problematic.
The last piece, the message I want to leave with you, is that children are developing beings. They play multiple roles; they try things out. Sadly, part of what we do, one of our developmental tasks, is to try out different roles, to try different types of identity, to try the aggressive behaviour. It's part of experimenting. It's part of us defining—children are taking the process to define who we are. If we're really going to be effective at addressing this issue about cyberbullying or bullying in our society, we need to start with a preventative approach, a public health education campaign. There's a role for government to be the integrative coordinator of that strategy, because it's a public health issue, and we have many examples—drunk driving, smoking—of where public health campaigns make a difference, can change children's lives, and can help them develop into the developing beings we want them to develop into.
I hope as an academic I made that under my 10 minutes.