18.06.2025 - 18:00

Guest Lecture by Prof. Yuichi Toda

Countermeasures Against Cyberbullying and the Smartphone Summit  |  Wed, June 18, 2025, 16.15–17.45 h at Essen Campus, Room S06 S02 B06

Lecture co-organized with the Department of Intercultural Psychology – Migration and Integration (Prof. Philipp Jugert), University of Duisburg-Essen.

Yuichi Toda is Professor at Osaka Kyoiku University, Kashiwara (Osaka Pref.).

Abstract:
The issue of cyberbullying is related not only to traditional forms of bullying but also to problems such as internet addiction, juvenile delinquency, and victimization through crimes committed by adults online, including grooming.
While many researchers and leading practitioners tend to focus on specific aspects of these problems, in school settings, it often seems more effective to address them comprehensively.
Together with my colleagues, I have supported an initiative called the “Smartphone Summit.” This is not an approach where adults identify the reality and impose countermeasures; rather, it is one in which adults aggregate the results of surveys conducted among children, and based on these results, the children themselves engage in discussions, consider what they should do, propose actions, and implement them.
This is a form of “collective self-regulation” conducted with the intention of valuing the agency of children.
Going forward, we hope to develop and implement a system that combines collective and individual self-regulation. Specifically, we aim to introduce a self-monitoring mechanism in which data collected through digital devices is aggregated in real time, allowing each child to recognize their own position within overall trends and adjust their behavior accordingly.