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“You’re fat.” I’m kidding. “Your nose looks strange.” “Do you ever eat?” The list of such comments could go on forever. But do people know that such expressions are a type of bullying?
Domestic cyberbullying has increased alarmingly in recent years, prompting activists and NGOs alike to demand action against all forms of bullying. In addition to defining the term “bully” and various other related terms in press releases, a primary focus of these groups is that normalizing bullying is a growing source of concern as bullying is a pervasive problem that touches many young people’s lives.
The Casablanca-based NGO Sourire de Reda recently shared with Morocco World News (MWN) statistics from its latest survey, highlighting the various types of bullying that young people frequently experience.
In the NGO’s survey, about 51.9% of respondents said they have been victims of physical or verbal harassment in their high schools. The survey, which used data from 2012 to 2021 from 2,863 participants, showed that 62.6% said they had been victims of humiliation and bullying.
About 51.9% of respondents said they have been victims of physical or verbal harassment in their high schools.
In an effort to clarify bullying, its challenges, and its effects on people, MWN spoke with professionals and everyday people who provided a variety of viewpoints, definitions, and recommendations.
Bullying leads to mental issues
The general manager of Sourire de Reda, Myriam Bahri, counseled victims of bullying to speak up rather than keep quiet and withdraw from society. For Bahri, victims’ reluctance to express emotions resulting from bullying makes them look for refuge in isolation.
“This could push people to think about suicide,” Bahri said, emphasizing that the internet is a monster, citing the increase in cyberbullying. “Cyberbullying is rising, since young people spend more time on the internet,” the general manager of Sourire de Reda told MWN.
Source de Reda has been engaged in combating bullying in many different ways since its founding in 2009. In addition, the association institutionalized February 5th as National Suicide Prevention Day.
According to Bahri, Sourire de Reda has been holding workshops for middle school and high school students. These workshops are designed for educators, administrators, and parents. The goal of the group is to “demystify issues related to harassment and cyberbullying, bring awareness to young people’s suffering, and provide resources and courses of action.”
Bahri recalled that her NGO launched a campaign, Click & Protec, in collaboration with Instagram. The aim of the campaign is to “raise awareness among youngsters about cyber harassment and help them understand the emotional turmoil that they go through when they face similar challenges.”
With the emergence of social media, people —particularly the youth— are more susceptible to cyberbullying.
Testimony from a cyberbullying victim
Hajar El Khaldi, a Moroccan documentary filmmaker and storyteller, talked to MWN about her experience with cyberbullying. She stated that she frequently moved and relocated “during critical moments of her life” as a result of her father’s employment.
She is frequently referred to as “the new kid.” El Khaldi explained: “Many times, I was not accepted by people at first. I always ended up making friends and finding a place, but I also, at least at the beginning of every move, would be the new kid and I’d feel kind of left out.” Although this was affecting her, she was not feeling bullied because she was able to defend herself.
When she was 17, Hajar suffered cyberbullying. She said that she experienced cyberbullying when she was sleeping over with her female friend.
“I was browsing the internet when suddenly I found my picture with her in a group on a social media platform. My stomach dropped. I come from a very conservative family,” she recounted. Although it was a completely normal picture, and there was nothing wrong with it, “we were both underage,” Hajar said, but her concerns about the picture grew as she thought someone could judge her from the way she was dressed.
Her concerns were not limited to that, because what happened next put more pressure on her as a teenager. She had no idea how the picture ended up in the hands of the anonymous poster who put it online alongside messages of cyberbullying. Hajar was overwhelmed by heartbreak, fear, and frustration all at once. But she could also not tell her family, because she did not know how they would react. “What if my family knew? Would they blame me for it? I cried the whole night,” she recalled.
The man who posted Hajar’s picture had been photoshopping many of her acquaintances. “It was so disgusting,” she said, emphasizing that she and her acquaintances knew the person, who claimed to be the son of a Saudi prince.
“He had mental issues and he thought he could get away with it,” Hajar said, noting that the perpetrator told his close friends that he posted her picture because she “was full of herself.”
While conceding that the situation was unbearably painful, Hajar said she did her best to “brush it off.” In trying to forget about the situation and the mess it had created in and around her, she deactivated her social media for a while.
As she “tried to be less expressive on social media,” she said she was grateful for the support from people who helped her following the incident. Hajar said she “tried to be less expressive on social media.”
In addition to cyberbullying, Hajar also said she experienced sexual harassment.
She elaborated: “I don’t think sexual harassment has that much to do with sex as it does with power.” It’s about who has control of the public domain and the street. Because when someone harasses you in the street, there is an underlying message of ‘you don’t belong here, I have the right to make you uncomfortable, go back home.’ And I think this is also a form of bullying.”
Bullying impacts
Elena Benedito Kourbi, a pediatric psychologist who specializes in treating children and adolescents, says that verbal and cyberbullying victims make up the majority of the cases she sees. Like Bahri, Dr. Kourbi argued that bullying could cause different challenges, including a lack of self-esteem and self-confidence, as well as isolation.
With the emergence of social media, people —particularly the youth— are more susceptible to cyberbullying.
“This form of bullying appears more often in secondary schools when young students have access to technology and smartphones,” Kourbi told MWN. With cyberbullying, victims could develop “shyness,” which could significantly impact their performance as students. Some prefer to stay alone because they don’t trust others, Kourbi warned.
When asked about why some people tend to bully others, Kour —who is also a school psychologist— said that some students seek to impose themselves and claim themselves as leaders, while others use bullying to gain popularity.
“Some of the aggressors were once bullied victims, so they become aggressors to protect themselves and also to have a sort of revenge,” the psychologist said. 
A survey, which used data from 2012 to 2021 from 2,863 participants, showed that 62.6% said they had been victims of humiliation and bullying.
The fact that bullying occurs in every school might be even more troubling. According to Kourbi, the phenomenon starts to show up more in primary schools and in the third year of secondary school. She asserted that students who are 16 and older tend to leave it behind and be more devoted to their studies.
Anti-bullying campaigns in Morocco?
In January of this year, the Moroccan Ministry of Education announced the launch of a pilot project to combat bullying in Moroccan schools. The program includes workshops with the goal of instructing professionals on how to deal with the phenomena. It also focuses on protecting children from cyber violence and electronic harassment.
According to Moroccan television channel 2M, the project’s first phase will include 22 teachers representing three high schools. Since then, no communication or updates about the project have been shared.
Chaimae Fertat, a high school teacher, told MWN that “empowering students to feel fully satisfied with themselves” and protecting them from bullying could save their mental health.
“ I have never witnessed any sort of awareness-raising in this context. Because the issue is so serious, the system needs to make an effort to sensitize and educate students,” the teacher said, stressing that the most common bullying incident she witnessed as a teacher was in the classroom whenever a student tried to answer and made mistakes.
After COVID-19 broke out, most schools around the world chose remote learning as an alternative during lockdowns and movement restrictions. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), during COVID-19, the number of internet users increased to 4.9 billion in 2021, compared to 4.1 billion in 2019.
The UN issued a warning, noting that “incendiary hate speech and cybercrime have significantly increased concurrently with rising internet usage.”
The UN issued a warning, noting that “incendiary hate speech and cybercrime have significantly increased concurrently with rising internet usage.”
UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, said the pandemic has also magnified the digital divide and the dark side of technology: the lightning-fast spread of misinformation, the manipulation of people’s behavior, and more.
