We work to create a kind and caring community on PopJam, SuperAwesome’s safe-social content platform, and a huge part of that is supporting events that spread positive messaging to kids.

As part of this, we participate in Anti-Bullying Week, which runs from 11-15 November. The Anti-Bullying Alliance is a coalition of organisations working to tackle bullying. This year’s theme is ‘Change Starts With Us’, and this is being echoed on PopJam.

Last year we worked with the Diana Award to create a week of interactive and informative anti-bullying content for PopJam. It proved to be a huge hit with PopJammers (our key demographic is 7-12 years old). 

This year, our friends at the Diana Award have again provided us with top tips and information for PopJammers to interact with. PopJammers will be able to tick the pledge to show they’re behind Anti-Bullying Week, and top tip posts will ask the kids to consider how they can make positive changes and who they can ‘check in’ with if they need to talk to someone. Their advice to tell someone and support others resonates with research we’ve done with PopJammers. 

Alex Holmes, Deputy CEO of The Diana Award, says: “Anti-Bullying Week is a chance for us all to come together to stand up to all forms of bullying. These events will provide our Anti-Bullying Ambassadors with further skills to enable them to effectively create campaigns in their schools which shape attitudes and change behaviours.”

As an online community for children, we take our duty of care very seriously. As well as clear community rules, human and AI moderation, and tools for blocking and reporting, we ensure that users understand that bullying isn’t acceptable on PopJam. A huge part of this is constant messaging around the importance of both kindness and good digital citizenship.

We ask users what their concerns are to ensure we’re addressing all issues as clearly as possible, in understandable language and in acceptable formats. This year we asked kids about their online concerns (check out our blog here) and created additional messaging about our community rules and how we moderate.

Last month we asked kids about how to stop bullying, and here are their responses. It’s always interesting to see how PopJammers from different parts of the world respond to the same questions:

Kids from the UK and Ireland thought telling someone was the most important thing to do to stop bullying, followed by being kind, standing up to the bully/ standing up for the victim, being nice and ignoring them. PopJammers advised telling parents and teachers, but also said trusted adults. The word trust was used a lot.

PopJammers from the US and Canada said bullying can be stopped by standing up to the bully/ standing up for the victim, telling someone, being kind, stop bullying from happening and being nice. ‘Be an Upstander and not a Bystander’ was mentioned multiple times.

Australian PopJammers wanted to stop bullying by telling someone (mostly parents and adults rather than teachers), ignoring the bullies, standing up to the bully/ standing up for the victim and by being nice.

There are other lesser mentions such as walk away, report them, ‘roast them’ (slang for making fun of/ mocking them), bully them back and leave the school. But the core actions PopJammers feel are important are telling someone trusted, standing up for themselves and/ or others and by being nice/ kind. 

Kids have strong thoughts about bullying – not just concerns, but a real passion to put things right and to emphasise kindness and inclusivity. By supporting Anti-Bullying Week, and by working with the Diana Award, we’re continuing to empower kids with advice, information and the tools to make a difference. 

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Interested in kids trends? Every month we create a Kids Insights Report, digging into all the trends in our highly-engaged PopJam community. If you’d like to check out this month’s report, click here.

Craig Donaghy is Head of Community Insight and Child Safeguarding for SuperAwesome.