AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
One of the serious issues is also the rapid increase of certain
kinds of problem behaviour, as it is with eating disorders. Eating
disorders among children and youth have in Slovakia increasing
tendency. It is proved by National Health Information Center
(www.nczisk.sk). Eating disorders present a serious problem,
because they endanger health and sometimes even life of
a person. Among most common eating disorders belong mental
bulimia and mental anorexia. People suffering from these eating
disorders have morbid fear of obesity and they lost control of
food intake. Dangerously many girls and women suffer from this
disorder, this mental disorder also occurs among men, but in
a much lesser extent.
Another serious problem of today is experimenting with drugs,
legal and illegal, by pupils of elementary and high schools.
Experimental and recreational drug use present significant risk
of addiction emergence. School researches TAD and ESPAD
describe the situation in Slovakia and other countries. Pupils of
elementary and high schools have personal experiences with
legal drugs (pupils stated regular smoking, drinking alcohol, they
admitted being drunk), they experiment also with illegal drugs,
mainly with marijuana.
A substantial problem these days is also the increase of
aggressive behaviour of pupils (Tomšik,
Dolejš, Čerešník,
Suchá, Skopal,
Čerešníková, 2018) and its occurrence among
still younger pupils (Saracho, O. N., 2017). Aggressive
behaviour of elementary and high school pupils may lead to
committing criminal offences. Such behaviour of pupils is
becoming more daring and brutal. The extreme form of
aggressive behaviour is bullying. It is a targeted and repeated
violence against such pupil or pupils who can't defend
themselves. Bullying may take different forms and it must be
dealt with by teachers of both elementary and high schools.
(Wachs, Bilz, Niproschke et al., 2019).
While in the past aggressive behaviour and bullying was mostly
spread among pupils, nowadays there are many cases when
aggressive behaviour is aimed at teachers. Several authors point
to this shift (Csémy, et al., 2014, Espelage, Anderman, Brown,
Jones, Lane, McMahon, Reddy, Reynolds, 2013, Garrett, 2014,
Kopecký, Szotkowski, 2017 a i.).
Current situation is characteristic by spreading new negative
phenomena connected with media and information technologies.
Their usage brought along with many advantages also many
risks and threats, especially for children and youth. A serious
problem of today is the so called cyberbullying, aka electronic
bullying (Hollá, Fenyvesiová, Hanuliaková, 2017, Wagner,
2019). It is the abuse of cell phones and the Internet to send
aggressive, hateful and damaging messages, or intimidation of
people. In particular, the anonymous Internet environment poses
in this case a considerable danger. Electronic bullying or
cyberbullying, despite the absence of real physical force, is very
insidious and dangerous.
Cyberbullying can grow into cyberstalking. Stalking (hunting,
persecution) is a term that identifies repetitive, long-term,
systematic and gradual persecution, which may vary in form and
intensity. We talk about cyberstalking when an attacker uses ICT
(through chat, social networks, etc. he/she arouses victim's fear).
In relation to virtual space, it is necessary to draw attention to the
cyber-grooming, which is such behaviour of the internet user
that evokes the victim to false trust and convinces him/her to
meet him/her personally. The motive of such behaviour is sexual
abuse, physical violence, or the abuse of victims for
pornography or prostitution.
Another type of risk behaviour is sexting, the possible negative
consequences of which young people do not realize. It also
occurs among pubescent and adolescent youth. Sexting is the
electronic distribution of text messages, one's own photos or
videos with sexual content. Most often, it is the distribution of
erotic photos or videos between partners. However, after a
breakup one of the partners may distribute these materials
through a cell phone or the Internet.
K. Hollá (2017) found out that boys and girls in the Slovak
Republic between the ages of 12 and 18 send their intimate
photographs, a significant increase in sexting in the form of
sending their naked and half-naked images was demonstrated at
the age of 12-17 years.
According to the current research from 2017 in the Czech
Republic, sexting is performed by 15% of children and youth in
the age of 8 to 17 years.
There are many reasons why children and youth commit this
form of risk behaviour (Kopecký, 2012, Hollá, J
edličková,
Seidler, 2018). Most often it is boredom, sexting is perceived as
a part of romantic relationships, it appears as the product of
social pressure (of a group), sexting is the product of consumer
society and it becomes a tool of self-presentation, sexting as
a tool of revenge.
A serious risk is the fact, that sensitive material can be sent to
a stranger (anonymous environment enables anyone to pretend to
be a classmate, elicit an intimate photograph by blackmailing,
etc.).
According to some authors, there is a close relation between
cyberbullying and sexting (Davis, Schmidt, 2016, Hollá, 2016).
Publishing the misused intimate materials on the internet hurts
the victim and may cause repeated harm.
Sexting provides the sexual deviants (predators) with a relatively
easy access to information that will help them gain the trust of a
child or juvenile and lead to extortion. It may be related to the
dangerous phenomenon we call sextortion. Sextortion is a
compulsion for sexual services or favours, the online extortion of
the victim. K. Kopecký (2014), based on the analysis of actual
cases, developed a model of perpetrator behaviour: establishing
contact with the victim (after first contacting, where he/she acts
under the same gender identity as the victim, the offender
convinces the child to provide him/her with personal, or even
intimate information), manipulation with flattery (the offender
evaluates positively of all the materials he/she receives, by
which he/she is getting the child close, the child longs for
admiration and appreciation), verifying the true identity of the
child (the offender needs to make sure that he/she actually
communicates with the child and that the photographs are
authentic, using the method of photographing with a specific
inscription, current newspapers, etc.), gradation of intimacy (the
intimacy of photographs that the victim and the offender
exchange usually raises, the photographs of the offender are
scams, and he/she gets them from foreign portals, the child then
begins to perceive the distribution of intimate material as
something ordinary, and sends his/her own shots to the
offender), multistage extortion (when the victim decides to quit,
the offender goes into extortion and he/she menaces that he/she
will publish and forward the material he/she has received). With
the obtained materials, the perpetrator can force the victim to a
personal meeting; extortion may go through to forced
prostitution.
2 Prevention of Risk and Problem Behaviour of Pupils in
Slovakia
School, especially primary school, plays an important role in
prevention as it is attended by the whole population of children
from their sixth year of age, with some rare exceptions. School,
as a professional institution, ensures implementation of
prevention, mainly primary prevention and since problem
behaviour is wide-spread among pupils, also secondary
prevention. The area of secondary prevention covers a complex
care of pupils with problem behavior, starting from educational
problems in a family, through violation of the school order, up to
violation of valid legislation.
Prevention coordinators are the main actors of prevention at
elementary and high schools in Slovakia. A school director
assigns one of the teachers the function of prevention
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