Cyberbullying is the act of bullying through digital devices such as mobile phones, computers, and tablets. Cyberbullying can be done through text messages, social media, forums or online games where people can view, participate or share content. Examples of cyberbullying include sending hurtful texts or instant messages, posting embarrassing photos or videos on social networking sites, and spreading average rumors online by using mobile phones.
If you want to figure out if your child is being bullied on the Internet, you need to pay close attention to your child's online activities. If you don't see signs of cyberbullying, you can breathe a sigh of relief. If you find that your child is being bullied, please take it seriously.
To some extent, cyberbullying is the same as traditional bullying. When school ends, traditional bullying stops. However, children have almost no chance of escaping online bullying. Nowadays, many children use the Internet to bully and harass each other through their smartphones. Therefore, we list several proven ways to help you prevent cyberbullying before it happens.
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Educate yourself
- Educate yourself about different types of cyberbullying and learn about all the social media platforms your children use.
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Communicate
- Be patient and talk to your children what cyberbullying is, whether he/she knows someone is being bullied, and what to do when they are experiencing online bullying.
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Monitor online activities
- You can use iKeyMonitor to monitor your children’s online activities to detect signs of cyberbullying. You can notice it and save the evidence.
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Build a positive climate
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You can create a group chat or forum where parents can discuss issues related to cyberbullying.
Some Warning Signs of Cyberbullying
- Whenever you try to check their devices, they become extremely anxious about their phones, tablets or laptops.
- Your children may be very angry with what is happening on the screen, and they may even turn off the device.
- They become depressed or frustrated after going online or gaming.
- Your children are reluctant to discuss or share their online activities with you.
- Unexplained weight loss or weight gain, headache, stomach pain or difficulty swallowing.
3 Reasons Why Kids Cyberbully Others
Online bullying makes them feel funny
- The National Crime Prevention Commission reported that in a survey of teens, 81% said they thought cyberbullying is fun. Because cyberbullies don't see the victim's reaction with their own eyes, they may not be aware of how much damage they have done to others.
Peer pressure leads to bullying
- Sometimes children are cyberbullying to fit a group of friends or groups. As a result, these children succumb to the pressure of peers in order to be accepted by them. They are more concerned with adaptation than with the consequences of cyberbullying.
Bully online is anonymous
- Cyberbullying allows bullies to avoid facing victims, so it takes less courage and creates the illusion that bullies won't be caught.
6 Types of Cyberbullying & How to Deal with Them?
In order to protect your children from the harmful effects of cyberbullying, you need to take measures to stop cyberbullying once you detect it. However, before you work to prevent cyberbullying, it’s important to learn about the common types of cyberbullying.
1.Exclusion
What is Exclusion？
Exclusion is the act of deliberately isolating someone. There are exclusions in the case of bullying on the spot, and they are also used online to target and bully victims.
Examples of Exclusion
- Someone is excluded/not invited to a group or party, and he/she see other friends being invited.
- Telling other students not to be friends with someone.
- Embarrassing someone in public when someone tries to approach the group.
How to Deal with Exclusion？
- Tell your children to accept what happened. Let them know that exclusion is not their fault.
- Tell your children to admit the feelings of anger and hurt, but try not to stay on them for too long.
- Remind your children that these feelings are not permanent and you will accompany them.
- Tell your children that if they are excluded, they can always go to other places to make friends with others.
2.Flaming
What is Flaming？
This type of online bullying constitutes posting insults, or direct insults and embarrassment to their goals. Flames are similar to trolling, but usually, they attack victims more directly to incite them to fight online. It is the process that one person sends messages that are intended to hurt a person. These messages may be related to sexual pictures or harmful words.
Examples of Flaming
- Publish the question that will raise a strong debate by the group. The opinion of the person who answered may be opposed constantly.
- Post unfriendly arguments about someone on a forum or main site.
How to Deal with Flaming?
- Tell your children not to be afraid to seek guidance from a parent or friend before replying.
- Tell them to respond calmly. Stick to the truth.
- Remind your children that they may receive malicious responses. Tell them don’t play the game. Add the bully to the blacklist.
3.Trolling
What is Trolling？
Trolling means that a bully will deliberately harm others by posting seditious comments online. It can be used as a cyberbullying tool for malicious and harmful intentions. These bullies are often more likely to get out of the victim and have no personal relationship.
Examples of Trolling
- The trolls will actively spend time and effort to write terrible emails in response to victims who are unfairly disagreed, offended or unclaimed.
- The trolls will enter the forum and begin to spread the negative comments of the victims everywhere.
- On some blogs and sites that have comments enabled, sometimes you will find the troll cursing the victim, calling them and causing trouble.
How to Deal with Trolling?
- Tell your children to ignore these posts. The sooner you extinguish the troll, the better.
- Tell your children not to respond to them. Do not get angry.
- If the troll does not stop, ask the administrator or website owner to intervene.
4.Harassment
What is Harassment？
Harassment usually refers to the behavior of persistently sending harmful or threatening messages to someone. These threatening messages are harmful, frequent, and very serious. As a means of cyberbullying, harassment is negative in content and often occurs in chat rooms, through newsgroups.
Examples of Harassment
- Share humiliating things about the victim by mass email or mass chat.
- Spread lies or gossip about the victim on social media.
- Send harassing instant messages or text messages directly to the victim.
How to Deal with Harassment?
- Treat your children seriously - Talk to them and listen to them.
- Block bullies - Block and report the bullies on all social media if possible.
- Contact their school for help.
- Know the law - Record harassment and understand your rights in building a case.
5.Cyberstalking
What is Cyberstalking？
Cyberstalking is a particularly serious form of cyberbullying that can extend to the threat of physical harm to the target children. It may include monitoring, false accusations, threats, and usually accompanied by offline tracking.
Examples of Cyberstalking
- Send manipulative, threatening, lewd or harassing emails from an assortment of email accounts.
- Hack into a victim’s online accounts (such as banking or email) and changing the victim’s settings and passwords.
- Create fake online accounts on social networking and dating sites, pretend to be victims or attempt to connect with victims by using fake characters.
- Post messages with personal information about the victim (such as home address and phone number) to the online bulletin board or discussion group.
- Sign up for numerous online mailing lists and services using a victim’s name and email address.
How to Deal with Cyberstalking?
- Tell your children to seek help from someone they trust.
- Collect the necessary evidence and submit it to the legal authority.
- Check the privacy settings of your children’s social media profiles to keep their information safe.
6.Doxxing
What is Doxxing？
Doxxing refers to the posting of someone's personal information online so that others harass them. The personal information may include their addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, usernames, bank details or information about their family members.
Examples of Doxxing
- Post someone's personal photos.
- Release someone's phone number or address on the Internet.
- Post information about a person's family, school or other private documents.
- Encourage others to use the published information to harass an individual.
How to Deal with Doxing?
- To prevent trouble, take steps to ensure that your children’s personal information is private.
- Search your children's names in search engines such as Google, Bing, and Baidu to see what information is posted.
- Make all the social media profiles private.
- Proactively delete your children’s data from the data agent site.
How iKeyMonitor Helps In Dealing with Cyberbullying?
Cyberbullying is not difficult to detect because it leaves a lot of traces. You need an effective tool to detect these signs and stop cyberbullying before things are out of control. With iKeyMonitor, the ultimate parental control app, you can find the signs of cyberbullying, stop and prevent cyberbullying timely, protect your kids online, and help your kids grow up happily and healthily.
Monitor SMS & social chat messages
- Cyberbullying may occur through SMS text messages and social media. Therefore, you need to keep an eye on your children's SMS text messages and social chat apps. You can use iKeyMonitor to monitor all the chat messages sent and received on your children’s devices.
Take screenshots
- iKeyMonitor regularly captures screenshots of mobile activities, including photos, videos, chat apps and browsers, so you can easily view your kids' online activities.
Monitor pictures and photos
- iKeyMonitor monitors photos taken by the phone camera, screenshots saved in the photo album and pictures received in chat messengers such as WhatsApp, WeChat. Therefore, you can catch the evidence of cyberbullying to defend your children when necessary.
GPS tracking
- iKeyMonitor tracks GPS locations of your children’s devices at preset intervals so that you can know your children’s locations clearly. Also you can see their location history on the map and you will know whether your children have been in inappropriate places.
Track Web Browsing History
- iKeyMonitor tracks the web browsing history on your children’s phones, including the title, URL, date and time stamp when they are visiting websites. You can quickly tell if your children have visited websites about cyberbullying, then you can take appropriate actions timely.
Get alerts
- iKeyMonitor alert words feature enables you to set up keyword alerts on your children’s cell phones. In this way, you can get instant alerts via email timely whenever messages about cyberbullying are received on their smartphones.