Cyber Bullying – Safeguarding Kids From Virtual Threats

With the palpable rise in the usage of mobiles and computers, has gradually risen the malevolent trend of Cyber Bullying wherein individuals employ electronic communication for harming others. Cyber bullies could make use of text messaging, telephone calls, email, instant messaging services, social networking websites and web pages as a means of causing embarrassment to others. Bullying also dubbed as harassment, would translate to passing around malicious fake gossips, sending derogatory messages, saying humiliating stories or putting up pictures intended to make others feel discomforted. They could additionally involve pestering, vicious or sexual warnings or threats.

Cyber bullying is an array of things ranging from circulating odious messages or caricatures about the individual to letting loose secrets of an ex-pal, barring someone from an online group, speaking sexually-explicit information, or any kind of data that is a sham.

Surveys conducted by Symantec have revealed that kids globally (19%) have undergone some kind of experience with cyber bullies or cyber pranks that could involve getting messages, pictures, video recordings that are intentionally sent to poke jokes or tricks. However, most of the times, these jokes are at the expense of the person these are sent to.

A major concern for parents of kids that have access to the internet is that there are scores of latent virtual strangers that could do something that could be upsetting to their kids.

A survey conducted by Beatbullying reveals a shocking 35.9% of children aged between eleven to eighteen years old have experienced cyber bullying. Below stated are a set of comprehensive guidelines for parents on what online abuse is all about and ways of tackling it.

Being observant of the tell-tale signs

Parents of those kids that access the net on a regular basis need to watch out for certain signs like:

• Behavioural fluctuations
• Moodiness
• Being anxious
• Becoming withdrawn and going into a shell
• Showing dearth of confidence

Who engage in this form of Spiteful behaviour?

One might have an archetypal image of the playground bully who is generally big-sized, exhibiting confidence and aggressiveness. However, a cyber bully could be virtually anyone, and is a surmounting issue as more numbers of youngsters are accessing the net and mobiles. For a cyber bully, it gets quite easy to simply type down something with utter anonymity as compared to having the guts to say it directly face-to-face with the person.

What parents need to do?

One needs to stop hovering over the kid’s online activities, however parents must attempt at be attentive to which sites their child accesses. Parents should be expecting that their kids would come up to them for help or guidance- which might not mostly be the case – as often several kids have the feeling that their parents simply fail to comprehend what MSN or Facebook is all about. Parents need to be as accessible as possible and keeping the kids informed that there are places they could approach for getting assistance.

Cyber Bullying Curbing Organisations

The organisation named ‘cybermentors.org.uk’ is intended for kids in the age bracket of 11-18 years that offers skilled teen online mentoring along with easy accessibility to adult counselling via online or phone services. The site additionally offers data on the manner in which to inform service providers about this kind of obnoxious behaviour.

The organisation ‘beatbullying.org’ is determined to root out bullying from its source for all age groups.

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