We are living in a day and age where technology and social media have taken precedence over our lives, especially our children’s. Kids and teens tend to use digital devices more than most adults. The excess use of the internet makes them vulnerable to several unknown and known potential online dangers including cyberbullying.
What exactly is cyberbullying? It’s no different than bullying except for the fact that it occurs on the internet through the use of various digital devices including computers and cellphones. Gone are the days when bullying was seen as something happening only in schools. Easy access to the internet has allowed bullies to attack weak and innocent children through various online platforms.
As if parenting wasn’t a tough task per se, the danger of cyberbullying and other online threats has given parents all the more reasons to worry. Nowadays, parents have turned into “digital parents”, seeking ways to hack Android phone or iPhone devices of their kids so they can monitor their online activity and protect them from cyberbullies.
Cyberbullying is a growing concern for many parents and the only way to prevent it from spreading and affecting young lives is by teaching your kids to identify the signs at the right time and to stand up against it.
To make things simpler for you, we have noted down a few important and helpful tips that you can share with your kids and teens to prevent cyberbullying. Let us take a closer look at them.
The first step your kid can do to prevent cyberbullying from occurring is that they need to learn all about it. Make sure that they educate themselves enough to understand what is cyberbullying, how and where it occurs, and then discuss with others about what your kid is experiencing on the internet.
The second tip your kid can follow to avoid cyberbullying is to protect their passwords and all the sensitive information from strangers on the internet, especially social media. It is important that your kid does not provide any opportunity to the bully to post private, inappropriate, or embarrassing pictures and videos of them on their social media profiles or share them with the entire school through email.
Often teens take lewd photos of themselves and do not shy away from sharing it with a friend or peer on social media. Your kids need to understand that they should never, under any circumstance, share their private content be it photos or videos with others. It’s impossible to know when a bully might take advantage of their private photo and post it everywhere online to make their life miserable.
Teach your kids the consequences of posting something inappropriate on the internet. They must know that they should avoid posting anything online that can compromise their reputation. People will judge them based on how they appear to them on the internet. This point can be used by bullies to further embarrass you in front of everyone.
Educating themselves about cyberbullying is one thing whereas spreading awareness about the same is another. Teach your kids to raise awareness about cyberbullying whether through hosting an event, and running a campaign or movement. The more adults and kids know about cyberbullying, the better.
The best way to use social media platforms safely is to enable privacy settings on them. Different social media sites have different privacy settings so make sure you and your kids are fully aware of how to set them up. Your kids should only allow their close and trustworthy friends to see what they post on their social media profiles. Other than them, no one else should be able to see their posts.
This tip should be followed by parents as most kids wouldn’t want any monitoring app to be installed on their devices. Parents should install monitoring apps on kids’ devices to keep tabs on their entire internet activity and notice if they experience cyberbullying. Those asking questions like how to hack the iPhone through a computer or how to hack Android phone using another Android phone to monitor kid’s online activity should only opt for reliable and professional monitoring tools.
Just like your kids should never share their passwords with anyone, they should not also give anyone the chance to pretend as you or share wrong information. Tell them to always log out of their accounts on public computers because if they don’t do that, there’s a high chance the bully might change their password or lock them out for some time.
Parents should advise their kids and teens to never become a bully. Even if your kid suffers at the hands of a cyberbully, they should never think of treating them the same way. They should never be mean to anyone on the internet nor pass them derogatory or hurtful remarks.
Ask your kids to search for themselves on Google or other leading search engines every once in a while, to see if any personal photos or information attached with their name come up. If they find anything about them online that can be used by bullies against them, they need to take it down immediately.
Another mistake most kids and teens do is that they open and read messages even from people they do not know. They should never open messages from strangers because they can never know which message may contain viruses. The same goes for the messages received from the bullies. Ignoring messages and not engaging with bullies on any online platform will help your kids fight against cyberbullying.
