How to Protect Children from Cyberbullying

What is Cyberbullying?

"Cyberbullying" is a form of bullying when a child, preteen or teen is tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted by another child, preteen or teen using the Internet, interactive and digital technologies or mobile phones. It has to have a minor on both sides, or at least have been instigated by a minor against another minor. Once adults become involved, it is plain and simple cyber-harassment or cyberstalking. Adult cyber-harassment or cyberstalking is NEVER called cyberbullying.

Examples of cyberbullying behaviour are:

• threats and intimidation;
• harassment or “cyber-stalking” (e.g. repeatedly sending unwanted texts or instant messages);
• vilification / defamation;
• exclusion or peer rejection;
• unauthorised publication of private information or images;
• impersonation and manipulation.

Cyberbullying can range from embarrassing or cruel online posts or digital pictures, to online threats, harassment, and negative comments, to stalking through emails, Web pages, text, and IM (instant messaging). While any age group is vulnerable, teenagers and young adults are common victims, and cyber bullying is a growing problem in schools.

Some News on Cyberbullying

SurveilStar allows you to block entire categories of websites (such as pornography, gambling sites, time-wasting sites) so that you can control employee web surfing activity to keep them focused where they should be.

Judge grants warrant for terroristic threats against Spencer High student

The 17-year-old is accused of "cyberbullying" another school student who used to attend Spencer as well. The mother of the alleged victim showed the judge text message and facebook deaths threats, including a picture of the accused bully pointing a gun. Judge Steven Smith accepted this as evidence that could show probable cause.

Facebook to cracks down on cyber-bullying

The social networking site Facebook has agreed to strengthen its security measures to protect young website users from bullies, pedophiles, pornography and other online hazards.

Facebook has pledged to “aggressively respond" to inappropriate content, flash automatic warning signs when young users share personal information with strangers and improve technology that can verify the age of people on the site.

"Building a safe and trusted online experience has been part of Facebook from its outset," said Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer.

Mean Girls: Cyberbullying Blamed for Teen Suicides

Massachusetts Girl, Phoebe Prince, 15, Was Reportedly Bullied Online Before Taking Her life. Parents in a western Massachusetts town are trying to understand the horrific bullying that apparently led a pretty 15-year-old to kill herself -- and they are furious.

"Someone told her to go hang herself, and I don't really know who that was," student Jessica Chapdelaine said. "But she was getting bullied by some people, because there were people talking about her and I guess she just didn't like being hated."

Experts say Prince's story is not unique. Internet safety expert and privacy lawyer Parry Aftab told "Good Morning America" today that this type of bullying amounts to torture for some kids. Aftab said most of the cyberbullies are "mean girls" that target young teenagers through e-mail and social media sites. Signs that cyberbullying is happening can include a child's sudden hesitation to use the technology they had always been enthusiastic about like online gaming, Facebook or e-mail.

Cyberbullying Tips for Parents & Kids

A recent survey indicates that 1 in 5 teens have been Cyberbullied and it’s starting to happen at younger ages. 42% of of 4th-8th grade students have been cyberbullying victims. Here are some tips for parents and kids about cyberbullying.

Cyberbullying Tips for Parents

1. Sign up for free Google alerts on your Child’s name & their friends. This way every time your Child’s name is blogged about you can receive an email notification. You can also type in other keywords that you may want to track as well.

2. Become their friend on Facebook! If your child is on Facebook YOU absolutely need to join to parent them online! I can’t stress this enough & if you are intimidated check online or Facebook 101 classes and area community colleges that may offer a course at low cost.

3. Mobile bullying is a major problem as well, so play close attention to text messages, images etc… If you are really concerned you can look at using a service like my mobile spy this won’t be available for every phone but it could help some of you. Also you can turn off receiving images in text messages on your child’s phone!

Cyberbullying Tips for Kids

• Don’t respond to it, don’t fuel them.
• Tell a trusted adult about the bullying, and keep telling until the adult takes action.
• Don’t open or read messages by cyber bullies.
• Tell your school if it is school related. Schools have a bullying solution in place.
• Don’t erase the messages—they may be needed to take action.
• Protect yourself—never agree to meet with the person or with anyone you meet online.
• If bullied through chat or instant messaging, the “bully” can often be blocked.
• If you are threatened with harm, inform the local police.

Protect Your Children Against Cyberbullying

As a parent, it is necessary to warn your child against the evil of cyber bullying. Making the child aware of the crime can offer him some protection against cyber bullying. At the same time, the child will become more open about the issue and report you if any such thing occurs. If your child is a victim to cyber bullying, take a strong stand and tell the bullies to stop such activities. Mostly theses cyber bullies are teenagers or kids who would not want their parents to get involved and might restrain such activities. Ask your child to block such bullies from social networking sites, chats, etc.

If you are really concerned about your children's online safety you can install computer monitoring software like SurveilStar this is a parental control software solution and will help you track emails, IM’s, chats, social networking, websites visited, images viewed, etc.

To start an all-out strategic battle to protect my kids from online dangers, while still letting them safely enjoy the games and resources that are available on the Internet, SurveilStar is the perfect solution that can be used for filtering web site content and monitoring the web sites my kids are viewing on the Internet:

Advanced Website Content Filtering

SurveilStar comes with an advanced content filtering module which allows you to block websites on-the-fly. SurveilStar’s content filtering module perpetually scans web pages, in real-time, for blocked words and terms that you set. Whenever a blocked word is encountered, the webpage is instantly shut down before your children can view the restricted content, so that you don't have to worry about your kids viewing inappropriate web sites. It also protects against viruses, spyware, adware, malware, and even system hijack attempts.

The web content filtering settings let you create varying levels of protection, including a very restrictive Kids filter that only allows the safest web sites to be viewed, and a few medium-level pages that are just right for teenagers, and then a no-restriction level that's perfect for parents. You can also modify the default settings to add or remove sites at your discretion.

Kids Online Activity Monitoring

You can't watch your kids 100% of the time that they're on the computer, but it's helpful to have the ability to track their Internet activity when you're not around, as well as other types of computer usage such as IM chats and email.

SurveilStar Parental Control will take screenshots of your system every few seconds, and then lets you view it in a video-like display whenever you want to check up on your kid's computer activities. Besides, it will logs all computer activities including startup/shutdown, logon/logoff, hardware changes, software changes, application usages, website, document, printing, shared file logs, email send/receive, instant messages, application statistics, web statistics, traffic statistics, and more!