An Irish teenager has done his bit to stand up to cyber-bullying with a moving video to launch his own campaign #CreateNoHate.
Luke Culhane from Limerick wrote, produced and starred in the short film that shows him suffering physical injury and pain each time he is the victim of online bullying.
It is a powerful visual message, which clearly gets the point across that cyber bullying does have a real and damaging impact on young people.
February 9th is Safer Internet Day and thousands of campaigns and programmes are being launched around the world to try and keep the internet a safer place for everyone.
Luke is just 13 years old but has created a powerful and impressive video. He questions the viewer: “Have you ever cyber bullied anyone? Have you ever been cyber bullied? Have you ever witnessed cyber bullying?”
The youngster then informs us that 100% of teenagers answer ‘Yes’ to at least one of those questions, meaning that “everyone has a part to play to stop this needless behaviour online”.
He then advises the three practical steps that can be taken with regards to cyber bullying;
Stop and think before posting a message that could be hurtful to someone.
Block and report any online bullies to the platform auditors.
Tell a teacher, parent, sibling or guardian if you are being cyber bullied.
Luke, who is studying at Castletroy College, said: “I have been cyber-bullied myself so that inspired me to make this video to help raise awareness for other people about how to handle cyber-bullying.
“I wanted to show that it doesn’t have to be physical bullying to hurt someone so that’s why I showed the likeness between the two types of bullying. I felt that “Safer Internet Day” was an appropriate time to release this video to create discussion around the issue.”
Take a look at the #CreateNoHate video below. It has been viewed thousands of times so far since being posted yesterday.
