How To Keep Children And Teens Safe From Cyberbullying?

Cyberbullying aka cyber harassment is a form of bullying or harassing any person using electronic means such as Internet. Now a days, online bullying has become increasingly common, especially among teenagers in the countries such as India as well. Cyberbullying typically involves teenagers and other age groups who harass or sometimes get harassed in reverse online on the social media sites.

What is Cyberbullying?

How to Keep Children And Teens Safe from Cyberbullying? Cyberbullying includes posting rumors, threats, sexual remarks, a victims’ personal information, or other derogatory remarks. Bullying or harassing can be identified by repeated behavior with an intent to harm other. Thus, using internet, cell phones or other devices to send or post text or images intended to hurt or embarrass another person comes under cyberbullying.

Since research, legislation and education in this field are ongoing, yet there are various manuals available to educate the public, teachers and parents to bring awareness. It summarizes, “Cyberbullying is being cruel to others by sending or posting harmful material using a cell phone or the internet which may include sending emails, posting remarks on social media, creating fake accounts on the name of others etc.”

To get rid of or at least to escape/be prevented from cyberbullying, Awareness is the key factor which can help parents to keep their children safe and protected from happenings of such incidents since consequences of cyberbullying could be serious.

How To Keep Children And Teens Safe From Cyberbullying?

1. Discussion with the children regularly is important, though they would not come up directly if they are the victims of the situation yet you can discuss with them through the news around and let them come up with their views on it. This is the great way to keep children and teens safe from Cyberbullying.
2. Analyze their situations as well based on their views on cyberbullying and explain them about the consequences of this. This will build the confidence in kids and they will know the consequences if any such thing happens, in such way you can keep children and teens safe from Cyberbullying.
3. Build confidence in your children by assuring them that you (parents) are always there to help them.
4. Teach your children about the benefits of the technology if it is used in the right way and responsibly.
5. There should be some online etiquette which are same as in the real life. You should count on how many hours children spend their time on social media, online games and how much online media they are using for different purposes. This is the another way to keep children and teens safe from Cyberbullying.
6. Teach them not to use another person’s online media such as cell phone or computer and not letting others use their. They should not post embarrassing photographs, videos or messages to hurt others neither they should like or propagate/advocate such things on social media.
7. Tell them to keep their gadgets protected using strong passwords, firewalls and take other comprehensive security measures to protect from online threats. This will protect the gadgets from any vulnerability and will keep children and teens safe from Cyberbullying.
8. Encourage your children to remove, to block or to ignore such people who share such anti cyber activities (either on social media, send e-mails or messages) to bully others.
9. Become familiar with social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others and try to get to know the social networks your children are following/using and also take advice from the experts on it.
10. Check the privacy and visibility setting of the social media and change them to private for the secrecy of the profile of your children. Always tell and make them learn “Think before they post” rule on the social media even if your profiles are set to private or you have deleted the post, followers can take the screenshot of what you have posted. Things don’t disappear forever once they’ve been posted online. Everything can be shared with the entire world. This way you can keep children and teens safe from Cyberbullying.

Conclusion

Since it’s hard to believe the world without technology and social media now-a-day where we remain connected with the rest of the world in no time but there is dark side as well. In social media, it’s easy to share anything with our contacts easily, but it’s also very easy to get our private information be compromised or shared with the people we didn’t intend to share it with. So always be aware and remain protected from online predators and keep children and teens safe from Cyberbullying.

Image courtesy: Canva

Message from author: If you have more suggestions on this, please share your thoughts on it with me and do mail to me so that I may incorporate more point in the article. Since this article is for the social security and future of our teenagers, please share this among your family and friends, schools and colleges to spread the awareness.