How to protect your children from cyberbullying

Cyberbullying can affect children mentally and change their behaviour.

Cyberbullying can affect children mentally and change their behaviour.

Published Apr 30, 2021

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Johannesburg - As screen time has increased during the pandemic, so has the risk of cyberbullying.

There are a number of ways parents can help protect their children from online bullying and harassment.

The responsibility lies with parents educating, being aware and checking in with their children on a regular basis to make sure they are not experiencing any form of bullying

ESET spokesperson Kelly Payne said cyberbullying isn’t just limited to social media, but is often present on various platforms and manifests in various ways. With social media, cyberbullying could seemingly look innocent at first glance to casual observers.

“Cyberbullying is very similar to normal bullying that happens every day to kids in schools, but the risk of cyberbullying is that it happens in an online space so it has a far greater chance of being shared or going viral and can affect kids in a much bigger way because it can reach so many more people,” said Payne.

She said parents would start seeing signs of their children being bullied through their behaviour.

“A lot of children tend to start deleting their social media accounts or create new accounts. They start to become reserved, angry and quiet. If parents start to notice their child being like this, those are signs to dig deeper with their children.”

She added that bullying across the board, including adult bullying, is something that affects everyone mentally and becomes an internal struggle.

“Children often need counselling to deal with the effects of cyberbullying. It’s important to have open conversations with your children and make them aware of what cyberbullying is. Show them examples of what is happening on different platforms including gaming platforms and chat rooms, not just social media.”

ESET has created the platform Safer Kids Online and a We Live Security blog to help.

“Safer Kids Online has a free book that helps parents to take their kids through it, showing simple ways of how to deal with cyberbullies, what it is and how to combat it. Talking to them about collecting screen shots for evidence, speaking their truth and using their voice to not hide behind it,” said Payne.

She added that there were many different sites online that parents can use to help them keep their children safe.

“Most social media platforms have policies that talk to cyberbullying. The laws in South Africa aren’t where they should be yet. Cyberbullying is a new thing people are experiencing especially with Covid and children having to study online and work on laptops and digital platforms.”

She said cyberbullying could still be treated as a criminal offence in the country when personal information was being shared.

“Just checking your children’s social media settings to see if their accounts are on private or if they have public accounts. At ESET we have a lot of security programmes that people can install. We often suggest having strong passwords in place so that people can’t hack into your systems and use your personal information against you. Taking the step to show your children the settings of the apps is a great way to protect them,” she said.

The Star

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