Covid lockdowns continue to take their toll

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Before the workshops, Charfi meets with the school counselor, the course coordinator, and the principal to discuss her expectations for the sessions. The school counselor, Mme Dupont*, a friendly young woman in her 30s, says that although they have already covered the topic of bullying at length this year, a reminder “wouldn’t hurt.”

Dupont confesses that the first class of the day has proven to be a particularly difficult cohort of children. Lockdowns and Covid disruptions interrupted their primary schooling, severely affecting their level of socialisation . They arrived at secondary school with a distinct lack of empathy compared to other groups, Dupont says, and are quick to make fun of each other.

"During a discussion about life at school, I was shocked to see at least 10 children in the group [of 27] admit that they did not dare to answer questions in class because they were too afraid of being made fun of by their classmates," says Dupont, clearly saddened by the news.

In fact, looking around the workshop, the class is clearly divided between those on one side, who actively participate in the discussion, and those on the other, who remain silent. The girl whose phone was confiscated is a regular contributor, and she also confesses that she once spent 42 hours on her smartphone screen in one week.

Ending the scourge of bullying in schools
The workshops being held this week are particularly timely; just a week earlier, France had been rocked by the tragic case of Lindsay, a 13-year-old girl who took her own life following a sustained campaign of online bullying.

Charfi points out that although everyone knows that the problem exists, it does not seem to be improving: between 700,000 and one million cases of online harassment are recorded in France each year . Paradoxically, 76% of harassers have been harassed in the past.

Charfi launches into a debate about facts versus interpretation, using examples from her own online experiences combined with interactive exercises during which she asks children to say what facts they have learned from a selected sentence.

Explains how the brain works to demand information that it does not have, making them understand what is a known fact and what is an assumption that could be harmful if repeated and shared.

"Things are repeated and interpreted, and their defense for repeating them is 'that's what someone told me,' or 'well, he deserves it,' and that's how the bullying phenomenon continues," Charfi says.

«There is another reason, too. It happens because you need to express your anger. That is why bullying is often very, very closely linked to high school, much more than to other age groups. In high school you have already acquired what we call reason, but at your age we function mainly with emotions.»

Charfi’s discussion of what bullying is and why it spreads so easily – especially online – is reinforced by a short video in which actors reenact some of the internet’s worst hate speech in real-life scenarios. The violently racist and homophobic words stand in stark contrast to the actions of real people who step in on their own initiative to shut down bullies.

When the video ends, there is a stunned silence. The children are visibly upset, their heads down as they look for reactions from their peers.

“You can’t be afraid of a reaction you can’t see, so when no one reports it, people continue to harass,” Charfi says. “So it’s very simple: don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t say in real life.”

The discussion is completed by showing where and how online harassment can be reported to the authorities , and where help is available for those who need it.

Debunking the myths about influencers and content creators
Génération Numérique’s modus operandi is a decided lack of judgment. Charfi does not aim to moralize that everything digital is bad, but to explain and educate about the best way to use and control it. Using two TikTok videos, she canadian ceo email database demonstrates that the platform can be both educational and entertaining , and how videos can be edited to look natural while hiding advertising messages.

Children are laughing out loud at the second video, which shows a shirtless man discouraging train conductors by contorting his body to look like some sort of inflatable robot. Charfi explains that the video is an undeclared advertisement by the French company SNCF and points out the clues that give it away as a fake .

To his left, a child intervenes:

"That's what I want to do, be on social media."

It's the opportunity Charfi has been waiting for. The boy in the video, she notes, is a professional dancer. He has trained for years to be able to contort his body in that way. The video would have taken several hours and several takes. It wasn't made and published in 20 seconds .

“People like [French reality TV influencer] Nabilla are different. They have nice clothes and live in palaces, but they have no other life. They are forced to share everything about their lives permanently, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to make sure they remain popular . If you live life like that, believe me, at some point, psychologically, you are going to lose it.”

Charfi goes on to point out that professional athletes, artists, actors