The widely publicized downside of the convergence between computer and mobile phone technologies has been a big increase in reports of “cyber abuse” among young people.

Cyber abuse refers to a wide range of marginal activity including pornography, sexual solicitation, stalking and bullying.

Media attention tends to concentrate on the rarer, more serious cases of child pornography and happy slapping, but lower level abuse is very common. According to the US Youth Internet Safety Survey, one in five young people have experienced online harassment over the past year.

The Campbell Collaboration has just published a systematic review of interventions to prevent and reduce cyber bullying – but the message is not very optimistic.

Prevention and intervention efforts teach children about internet safety, but those so far available do not stop them behaving riskily online, according to Faye Mishna, Professor of Social Work at the University of Toronto and her co-authors.

At the same time, a recent survey commissioned by Offcom - the UK communications watchdog - suggested that children want advice about how to stay safe online.

Cyber bullying has the potential to be seriously damaging to children, says the review. Although there is little data available specific to the virtual sort, research on bullying and sexual abuse suggests that it may have far reaching effects on emotional, social and psychiatric problems, for both abusers and victims.

The review has highlighted the dearth of interventions with a solid evidence base. The authors trawled peer reviewed journals for experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations of intervention and prevention strategies targeting 5-19 year old internet users. The net was cast wide, taking into account software that blocks or filters web content, online and offline intervention with parents and children, and therapy for the victims of cyber abuse.

They found only three initiatives with adequate evidence. All the studies were quasi-experimental, using the natural divisions between school classes to establish control groups.

I-SAFE, a series of offline classes aimed at 10-14 year olds, was the most successful. Delivered by their teacher over five 40-minute lessons, children learn about cyber citizenship, security, personal safety, predator identification and intellectual property.

The program made a significant impact on children’s knowledge of internet safety, although it did not make them any less likely to engage in risky online behavior.

Another approach, The Missing program, is based on an interactive computer game for 11-13 year olds, accompanied by videos, posters and a guidebook for parents and teachers. Young people playing the game assume the role of a police officer to solve a series of puzzles about a missing teenager. In the process, they discover how an internet predator plays on the vulnerability of the teenager and uses various approaches to gain his trust.

Children receiving the intervention revealed information about themselves less readily but none of the differences with the control group was significant.

A third intervention, HAHASO, was a more traditional bullying program that included a cyber bullying component. Using a five step strategy - Help, Assert Yourself, Humor, Avoid, Self-talk, Own it - and delivered to 10-12 year olds over five classes, the program is designed to help children avoid bullying and to deal with it better should they encounter it.

The program made no significant impact on cyber bullying, but did increase the social skills of children who took part.

Prevention efforts must catch up, the authors say. Existing programs are limited in their effectiveness and the proof that they work at all is not watertight.

The review also highlighted the fact that the interventions only covered a very limited age group. Children are coming into contact with computers at ever younger ages and prevention efforts need to match the real world.

“Developers of cyber abuse programs must create prevention and intervention strategies that do more than increase awareness of the potential threats of the internet. Emphasis needs to be placed on actually decreasing risky online behaviors,” the authors conclude.

See: Mishna F, Cook C, Saini M, Wu M J and MacFadden R (2009), “Interventions for Children, Youth, and Parents to Prevent and Reduce Cyber Abuse”, Campbell Collaboration