As the world progresses rapidly, so does technology and with a rapid rise in technology, cyberbullying has made its way into the society and is slowly replacing the actual bullying. When a child or a teenager find themselves the target of harassment, humiliation, and other nefarious activities via the internet or other digital technologies, it can be termed as cyberbullying. When we say cyberbullying, it is not about sending a onetime message or a onetime communication; it involves serious threats and harm that can actually be detrimental to a child’s psyche or health and make them lose their self-confidence where they see themselves pushed into a shell where they are not confident of facing the society anymore. There is a rise in these cyberbullies who misuse technology to commit different types of offences via the internet.
Cyberbullying can happen at anytime, anywhere, and to anyone. These cyberbullies act under fake profiles and spread so many bad rumors that many a time it’s difficult to trace them or find the source from where it comes. Most of the kids who are bullied on the internet and otherwise have low esteem and there is a slow deterioration in their studies, thereby resulting in low grades. Many of them find it so hard to cope up with the stress that they find solace in alcohol and drugs. The rise in cyberbullying nowadays is alarming that we need to take urgent action to stall it from becoming worse.

There are a lot of ways where this can be prevented. It’s always important for parents to monitor the activities of children online. Parents should always know what their kids are doing online, with whom they are communicating, what they are sharing, and with whom they are friends with. There should make safe rules for them so that they know how to use their computers safely and be strict with them if they don’t obey. Social networking sites have lots of privacy settings which enables users to restrict the viewership to the ones they choose. Tell the kids to identify between real friends and online predators and not share their passwords with anyone. Schools also have their own support system where parents can contact the teacher, school counselor, and the school higher authorities if they feel the child is being bullied by someone in the school via internet.
We cannot keep away our kids from being tech-savvy; but we can always teach them to use the internet safely so that they do not become targets of cyberbullying and emotionally equip them to find other sources of activities to keep them occupied instead of getting addicted to this lifeless connectivity. Parents and schools can also help in scheduling their activities at home and school skillfully that they need not engross in these kind of morale boosting and attention seeking activities.

J.T. Son