Changing Faces say youngsters with a disfigurement are struggling with a very hostile school environment
Less than a third of young people say they would be friends with someone who has a facial disfigurement.
Half of youngsters have also admitted to staring at a person with a visible difference and one in six have admitted to taking a photo of someone who looks different.
A report from the charity Changing Faces, which includes a survey of 15,000 young people, has said the figures highlight the hostile environment for children with disfigurements.
The charity also found that concerns about looks start early, with children as young as seven worrying about their own appearance.
Only two out of five young people feel confident about their appearance and one in ten say they are depressed about how they look.
The majority say they have experienced nasty or negative comments about the way they look and most are made openly by people at school.
Lucy from Glasgow was born with Treacher Collins, which meant that she had no cheekbones, no ears and no jaw.
Now 22 years old, she remembers how hard it could be to deal with people’s reactions, especially if it involved other young people.
“My mum hates it when people stare but I’m just like ‘oh well that’s their problem’. The only time it really upset me was when we were picking up my little brother and I was in the car and noticed a group of teenagers videoing me and taking photos.
“Even as the car moved off, they followed us and carried on taking photos. I was twelve years old and it really got to me.”
There are 86,000 children of school age in the UK today with a disfigurement.
The report found appearance-related bullying gets worse as young people move to secondary school with more than six in ten teens experiencing negative or nasty comments.
Half of young people say they have witnessed negative behaviour towards a person with a visible difference, and more than a third admit to having acted in a negative way themselves. This behaviour is most likely to include staring at a person with a visible difference, pointing or saying something nasty to them, or taking a photo of them.
Changing Faces head of Scotland Rob Murray said: “Every day children and teenagers are bombarded with messages telling them that they need to look a certain way. Magazine covers and social media portray such a narrow view of beauty, so looking different and having a visible difference in a society that wants you to look the same is tough.
“Reaching children when they’re young, so that they learn to value difference, is so important. Changing Faces wants a world where everyone with a visible difference on their face or body has the confidence, support and opportunity to lead the lives they want.”
The report was released to coincide with Face Equality Day on Wednesday, 23 May.
Changing Faces is calling on the Scottish Government to include lessons on visible difference and for advice on reducing appearance related bullying to feature in the school curriculum.
The charity, which runs workshops and training in schools, has also developed new resources to help teachers and youth workers to support their young people to talk about appearance-related bullying and visible difference.
