Reword
Award: Yellow Pencil
Yellow Pencil / Creativity for Good / Service Innovations / 2017
Brief:
Bullying has moved from schoolyards to social media. Each year 463,000 young people are bullied online in Australia, and 78% are 10-15 years old.
Anti-bullying efforts have traditionally focused on reaction rather than prevention. There’s nothing to prevent it in the first place.
We set out to find an innovative way to effect real change online – tackling online bullying behaviour before it happens.
Beyond young people, we also targeted parents & educators to support Reword in their community.
Solution & Cultural Context:
Reword is a real time alert for online bullying, acting as an educational tool to develop a child’s moral compass on social media.
Reword uses a custom lexicon database and detects insults using regex matching. When a match is found the child is alerted with a red strikethrough, instantly interrupting their behaviour and making them reconsider. Reword integrates with all social platforms and is designed so children can contribute new insults, helping the tool recognize evolving language.
Impact:
The first six weeks showed a distinct behaviour change: 84% of insults detected were reworded. Bullying behaviour per user dropped an incredible 67%.
Reword has universal relevance, garnering global coverage on CNN, Wired and Mashable.
Now, with support from local governments and expansion to a mobile app, Headspace is committed to implementing Reword in every school nationwide.
As Reword grows, so will its impact, creating a new generation that respects each other – online and in real life.
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