The effectiveness of school anti-cyberbullying policies and their compliance with South African laws
type: CreativeWork
description: With technological advances and an increased reliance on technology for schooling and other daily activities such as communication, students need to navigate the downside of the digital age; namely, cyberbullying. Cyberbullying continues to be a concern for parents, teachers, and the government as the number of students with access to technology increases. The fourth Social Development Goal (SDG 4) of the United Nations is focused on quality education. Cyberbullying has been associated with truancy which leads to students dropping out, poor academic performance and health issues such as depression and even suicide. These effects are contrary to the goal and left unchecked will impede the UNs 2030 target date, therefore, it is imperative to reduce cyberbullying. In this digital age it is becoming increasingly complex to regulate cyberbullying and protect the vulnerable such as students. Due to this problem, schools have been mandated to ensure the constitutional rights of their students to safety and education are not disrupted by cyberbullying. To comply, schools have developed policies, standards and frameworks that ensure these rights are met. Some schools developed and adopted a Code of Conduct, others specific anti-bullying and anti-cyberbullying policies, while some rely on a combination of policies including the Acceptable Use of Technology policies to meet their obligation of curbing cyberbullying. Current practices in developing these policies have however been deemed weak and the teachers developing them identified as ill-equipped. Little is known regarding the state of South African high schools' policies with no preceding research focusing on this in an African context. The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of school cyberbullying policies by measuring whether these policies are in line with national regulations. To achieve this, the researcher using systematic literature review, synthesised existing literature identifying various th…
abstract: With technological advances and an increased reliance on technology for schooling and other daily activities such as communication, students need to navigate the downside of the digital age; namely, cyberbullying. Cyberbullying continues to be a concern for parents, teachers, and the government as the number of students with access to technology increases. The fourth Social Development Goal (SDG 4) of the United Nations is focused on quality education. Cyberbullying has been associated with truancy which leads to students dropping out, poor academic performance and health issues such as depression and even suicide. These effects are contrary to the goal and left unchecked will impede the UNs 2030 target date, therefore, it is imperative to reduce cyberbullying. In this digital age it is becoming increasingly complex to regulate cyberbullying and protect the vulnerable such as students. Due to this problem, schools have been mandated to ensure the constitutional rights of their students to safety and education are not disrupted by cyberbullying. To comply, schools have developed policies, standards and frameworks that ensure these rights are met. Some schools developed and adopted a Code of Conduct, others specific anti-bullying and anti-cyberbullying policies, while some rely on a combination of policies including the Acceptable Use of Technology policies to meet their obligation of curbing cyberbullying. Current practices in developing these policies have however been deemed weak and the teachers developing them identified as ill-equipped. Little is known regarding the state of South African high schools' policies with no preceding research focusing on this in an African context. The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of school cyberbullying policies by measuring whether these policies are in line with national regulations. To achieve this, the researcher using systematic literature review, synthesised existing literature identifying various th…
author: Ganca, Simo-Sihle
keywords: Information Systems
date published: 2024
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:23:49Z
provider: University of Cape Town
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Department of Information Systems

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/40294