The Bullying Simulator

Background

In Sweden, one third of all teens reported that they had been bullied online.

Friends was a NGO dedicated to helping schools and students stamp out bullying.

The problem was that a lot of adults (and parents) had never experienced online bullying and did not understand

The Swedish Schools Inspectorate stated that nine out of ten schools were doing little or nothing to prevent online mobbing.

At the same time, owners of social media had not taken a stand against the abuse of their platforms.

Idea

The solution was a Facebook application that made the user experience personally what it was like to be a bullied teenager.

Basing the campaign in Facebook was entirely relevant because this was where the problem of bullying was most shockingly expressed.

Your Facebook page looked exactly the same except that all the comments from your friends were now negative and cruel. Your photos were trashed and videos were uploaded mocking you.

Results

The campaign gave thousands of people a first hand experience of what it felt like to be bullied. The importance of this cannot be understated.

10,000 people used the application even though it was only available for ten short hours. In that time, it attracted a record number of Likes as well as many thousands of share posts and tweets.

It put online bullying and bullying in general on the Swedish agenda. And it provoked action from Facebook. They closed the page down but were forced to send a senior executive to Sweden to discuss the implications of their action, which looked like an abrogation of responsibility.

Our Thoughts

I found a site where you can see how the app would have worked and I found it very shocking. It is true that most adults have no idea at all what cyber-bullying is like. It is also true that the people who manage social media also have no idea. How else could they allow this unnerving and frightening abuse to continue?

What made this app so disturbing was because it was technically clever as well. So if you downloaded it, you would see video of kids burning your Facebook profile photo. So even while you knew it was not for real, it would have felt extremely real.

I am worried that Facebook swatted away this page and offered no more than hot air and a meeting rather than practical help to Friends. They appear to be suggesting that those who suffer from abuse need to help themselves rather than expect it from anyone else.

Facebook may well be a large and powerful company but as a brand it has a number of serious fault lines.