Bullying filth on school Facebook pages

An investigation of more than 4800 Australian primary and high schools has
revealed more than 10 per cent have a Facebook page on which students are
taunting each other and teachers with abusive language and offensive pictures. 

AUSTRALIA: Students at almost 500 schools are running Facebook sites dedicated to humiliating their peers as more and more children are forced to carry the incessant burden of cyber-bullying outside the school gates.

A News Ltd investigation of more than 4800 Australian primary and high schools has revealed more than 10 per cent have a Facebook page on which students are taunting each other and teachers with abusive language and offensive pictures.

Many of the posts are too offensive to reprint, but include graphic sexual discussion of students and teachers, shocking gore photos of suicide and accident victims, underage girls labelled ``sluts'', male teachers named as paedophiles and references to Nazism.

The majority of pages - many which carry the school's full name and logo - contain homophobic, racist and misogynist jokes and drug references.

Some of the most insidious pages, typically called ``burn books'' or ``goss pages'', name and tag students in vicious rumours, which are then ``liked'' and shared around other students' social networks.


Of 285 schools surveyed in WA, 38 had Facebook ``burn'' pages or similar. One Facebook page for Ballajura Community College school featured a photograph of a male teacher and female students overlaid with the logo of a pornography website, accompanied by snide comments joking that he was a paedophile.

The page, which accrued more than 600 fans since its launch in mid September, also featured photographs of students fighting, jokes about female Year 7s being "sluts'' and arguments between students using extremely offensive language, all underneath the school's official logo.

That page has since been deleted, however two others using the school's name still exist.


Cyber-bullying expert Dr Barbara Spears, from the University of South Australia, said ``liking'' nasty Facebook posts was the new face of schoolyard bullying.

"Clearly, `liking' such pages contributes to the ongoing humiliation of others, and bystanders - those who contribute to bullying by not doing anything about it - are actively supporting it,'' she said.

Studies suggest 15 to 30 per cent of children are bullied at school, and around 10 per cent have been cyber bullied.

Dr Spears said bullying was not shifting from the schoolyard to the screen, but ``expanding'' there.

Constant access to technology meant "there is no escape'', she said.

- perthnow.com.au