Bullying Awareness Week: why we need to stop cyberbullying now

Bullying is a major public health issue across the world, affecting primarily younger demographics.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an average of 42% of boys and 37% of girls have been exposed to bullying. In the United States, data collected in one large study by stopbullying.gov shows that about 49% of children in grades 4–12 reported being bullied by other students at school at least once during the past month; whereas 30.8% reported bullying others during that time.

More recently, a different type of bullying has being mobilizing parents, educators, policy-makers and healthcare communities: cyberbullying. “Only through united community efforts will we be able to overcome the forces of bullying, hatred, prejudice, and exclusion to whole, safe and inclusive communities,” says Maudie Muraida, Executive Director of United Communities of San Antonio (UCSA), a nonprofit organization based in Texas dedicated to helping children and young victims of bullying, racism and prejudice.

 

Why Cyberbulling is so dangerous:

 

According to stopbullying.gov, cyberbullying can have an even bigger impact on its victims since it can happen 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, reaching its victims even when they are alone. Besides, offensive messages can be posted anonymously, and distributed very fast to an incredibly wide audience. Not to mention how hard it can be to trace its source and/or to delete offensive content.

With this in mind, UCSA in partnership with award-winning creatives Abe Garcia (Dieste), Daniel G Milan (Lopez Negrete NY) and Dario Campos (McGarryBowen SAT), and Shooters Films has launched a new campaign focused on cyberbullying.

The film, called “Devices’ was created primarily to run on the digital platforms such as social networks, websites and blogs. “If we want to reach out these young demographic, we need to be exactly where they are”, says creative director Abe Garcia. “We did not what to create a warm TV spot. We wanted something that could cause real impact,” says Mr. Milan and Mr. Campos.