Through the project, AIM “Together to guarantee cyber-safety and prevent cyber-bullying in schools” (CYBER-SAFETY), partners aimed to achieve the following objectives: Raise Awareness about Cyberbullying among Teenagers: Enhance the understanding of cyberbullying among adolescents aged 13-18. Empower young people with the knowledge and tools to recognize episodes of cyberbullying. Provide Teachers with Skills and Competences for Preventing and Fighting Cyberbullying: Equip teachers and youth educators with the necessary skills to address and prevent cyberbullying. Enable educators to effectively engage with teenagers on the risks associated with the online world.
Nowadays, kids are exposed to all kinds of content coming from different online platforms. In 2019, 94 % of young people in the EU-27 made daily use of the internet, this was 16 percentage points higher than the share recorded in 2011. Young people in the EU-27 were more likely to use the internet daily than the whole of the adult population (77 % in 2019). [EUROSTAT, 2019] This can lead to an incredible advancement in digital skills for Europe’s new generations, however, it also brings an incredible risk. Bullying has always been a problem in the phase leaving childhood and entering adolescence and adulthood. In 2018, 65% of the people using social media revealed they faced episodes of cyberbullying. The same for 33% of those using Online Messaging and 29% of those using Online Chat Rooms. [STATISTA, 2018] Most of these tools, can be accessed with a minimum round of control on age, simply by assessing of being over 18. This leaves an open door on what could be a very dark world for teenagers that do not have the right knowledge and skills to assess danger in an unknown territory in which most of the times you need to use your soft skills and critical thinking to read and understand the people on the other side of the screen.