Bullying is now being seen as a form of entertainment, as highlighted in the Celebrity Big Brother reality show, the National Youth Council said yesterday.
Council director Mary Cunningham said there was "something seriously wrong with our society when you get to the stage where bullying is seen as entertainment". By yesterday, almost 20,000 complaints had been made to British media watchdog Ofcom and the Channel 4 programme about alleged racist bullying of Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty by other contestants in the reality TV show.
Ms Cunningham said the controversy showed that anyone could be affected by bullying, even beautiful, successful actresses. She was speaking at the launch of "Let's Beat Bullying", an anti-bullying resource produced by the council for those working with young people. It makes recommendations on how to identify and deal with bullying and how to prevent it beginning.
Launching the resource, Seán Haughey, Minister of State at the Department of Education, said it was 12 years since an anti-bullying resource was drawn up for the youth work sector. Many new forms of bullying had emerged since then, including text bullying, e-mail bullying and bullying through blogging, he said.
Stephen Minton, psychology of education lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, said research had found that one child in every primary school class was bullied at least once a week.
