How to stop cyberbullying from affecting the lives of your children.
Nearly half of all children have been bullied online and one in four children have experienced it more than once. We hear terrible cyberbullying stories all the time but like it or not, technology and the internet are a big part of your children’s lives.
Even though cyberbullying can happen to adults too, most online bullying happens to pre-teens and teenagers. This is because they tend to spend the most time on social media and messaging apps.
What constitutes cyberbullying?
These are just a few of the ways that someone can bully a child online:
- Circulating unflattering pictures
- Sending rude messages or threats to a child’s phone
- Spreading rumours online
- Hacking a child’s account and posting hurtful messages
Some cyberbullying cases tend to blow over while others can carry on indefinitely. Either way, being bullied in front of their peers is an experience that stays with a child for a long time. In some of the worst cases, children even revert to suicide to get away from the torment.
Educating your children on cyberbullying
While parents cannot protect their children from everything, there are a few ways that you can teach your child to be more cautious online in order to greatly reduce their chances of being bullied.
- Create stronger passwords. People’s social media and email accounts are hacked every single day so help your child come up with strong passwords for all their accounts to prevent this from happening to them.
- Discuss photos and images. Sit down with your child and chat about photos and what’s appropriate for online use. Certain photos can be used against them online and should rather be kept private.
- Setup privacy controls. Help your children limit who can see their profiles and personal details online across all the platforms they’re present on.
- Practice online etiquette. It’s important to remind your child to treat others with respect online to avoid people lashing back at them and bullying them in return.
- Think before posting. You never know when one post can lead to a string of hurtful comments and replies. Teach your children to review their updates, tweets and images before they post them online. Even if they’re sharing a post from a friend or a page, get them to think about what they’re posting and whether it’ll potentially offend someone else.
- Turn to Google. It doesn’t hurt to Google your child’s name every now to make sure that there aren’t any damaging images or content stored online that could be used against them later on.
For more on how to keep your children safe online visit www.saferschools.co.za
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