Cyberbullying: Strategies to Take Back Your Power

Strategies against cyberbullying for parents and children

About Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is being cruel to others by sending or posting harmful material or engaging in other forms of social aggression using the Internet or other digital technologies. Cyberbullying can take different forms:

Flaming Online fights using electronic messages with angry and vulgar language.

Harassment Repeatedly sending nasty, mean, and insulting messages.

Denigration “Dissing” someone online. Sending or posting gossip or rumors about a person to damage his or her reputation or friendships.

Impersonation Pretending to be someone else and sending or posting material to get that person in trouble or danger or to damage that person’s reputation or friendships.

Outing Sharing someone’s secrets or embarrassing information or images online.

Trickery Talking someone into revealing secrets or embarrassing information, then sharing it online.

Exclusion Intentionally and cruelly excluding someone from an online group.

Cyberstalking Repeated, intense harassment and denigration that includes threats or creates significant fear.

Cyberbullying, is defined by the Cyberbullying Research Center, as "willful and repeated harm" inflicted through phones and computers. The statistics:

42 percent of kids have been bullied while online.

35 percent of kids have been threatened online.

53 percent of kids admit to having said something mean or hurtful to another person online.

58 percent have not told their parents or an adult about something mean or hurtful that happened to them online.

Things parents can do:

The powerful impact of feeling scared, powerless, helpless, ashamed and other emotions that can result from being cyber bullied, particularly when occurring over a long period, has the capacity for long-lasting effects on children.

Ways that you can protect a child from any long-lasting negative impacts of cyber bullying include:

Take lots of time to hear, listen and understand your child’s story

Discuss cyber bullying with the child and encourage them to tell you if they’re feeling bullied

Be alert to any abnormal behavior / mood changes

Stay calm while your child is telling you his/her story, and be aware of your own reactions.

Take complaints from the child seriously, do not brush them off

Try to ascertain what ‘meaning’ the child takes from the bullying, for example whether they believe what the bully says about them

Assure the child that it is not their fault

Strategy for children against cyberbullying:

If you are the target of cyberbullying:

Don’t respond to bullying or inappropriate messages, but save them as evidence.

Don’t feel shame. Discuss any online incidents that make you feel uncomfortable with a trusted adult, such as a family member, teacher or school counselor.

Always report online bullying, hate incidents, inappropriate sexual activity and threats of harm to self or others to an adult family member (such as a parent), school authorities and the police.

Block the e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers of people who are sending unwanted messages; if the messages continue, an adult family member can help you to change your phone numbers, e-mail addresses or screen names.

File complaints with e-mail services, Internet Service Providers, Web sites, cell phone companies, etc. Service providers can find the offenders, cancel their service, and report them to the police if necessary.

When in doubt about what to do, log off the computer and ask for help from a trusted adult.

Tool against cyberbullying - SurveilStar Parental Control Software:

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

SurveilStar Any Parental Control helps you start an all-out strategic battle with cyberbullying and take back your power against any online dangers, while still letting your children safely enjoy the games and resources that are available on the Internet. SurveilStar is the perfect solution that can be used for you to response to any cyberbullying.

When a cyberbullying incident occurs, it is important that schools, teens and families work together to minimize the potentially devastating consequences for the targeted individual and the school community as a whole.

Please note that kids' internet safety is a very important issue. Don't hesitate to download the powerful internet monitoring software to prevent them from the victims of cyberbullying.