Anonymous Mobile Bullying Helpline -- Or New Bullying Tool

from the how-helpful-is-it? dept

There have been a ton of stories about how bullying by text message is a growing problem, but very few talk about solutions. One school in the UK is testing out an anonymous SMS bully line, where kids can alert school officials about bullies anonymously. It's an interesting idea, but does it actually work? First, if it's truly anonymous, then how can the school verify the bullying? In fact, this system could become a tool of bullies who accuse other of bullying. If it's not really anonymous, then it's no different that usual systems for students to let teachers know that someone is bullying them -- and most students are afraid to do so, for fear of retribution.
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  • identicon
    Oliver Wendell Jones, 23 Nov 2004 @ 8:37am

    Thanks for the evidence?

    If someone sends you bullying IM, doesn't it include your name or phone number in the From: section?

    Couldn't you just go to a teacher/principal and show them the message and the header information?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 24 Nov 2004 @ 10:44am

      No Subject Given

      Yes, this seems like a stupid idea when SMS messages are traceable to begin with.

      This will be throughly abused by those that it was meant to thwart.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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