How to Help your Kids Avoid Cyber Bullies?

Summer vacations are here and it’s time for kids to stay home and enjoy. But this also means that kids get more time to spend on the internet. Scrolling through social media news feed, liking pictures of their friends, browsing latest music videos, etc. can lead to more peer to peer interactions and can even lead to cases of cyberbullying.

Though it is hard to shield your child at all times from cyberbullying but parents can certainly minimize the occurrence of such incidents and can make their children aware about cyberbullying. Here are some preventive ways:

• Vacations are the time when children love to play and have plenty of time to do so. Online gaming being more preferred by children of this age, makes them prone to several security risks. Your child could be talking to strangers while playing games through online gaming communities or might click on an infected link that could launch malware to your system, leading to security leaks.

• Make sure your child’s social media profile is not public. This means that your child’s photos, status uploads, check-ins, videos, etc. should be set to private or friends so that not everyone is able to view, access and download it. This helps in reducing the chances of cyberbullying as their online profiles will be limited to their friends only.

• Make sure that your kids are not just glued to their online screens all the time since they have a lot of time during summer vacations. To maintain a balance between their daily routine, health and online activities, parents can set different goals for children to be accomplished in a day. These goals may include some creative activities, outdoor games, household work, etc.

• These days the trend of asking questions to each other on various social media platforms is quite high. The risk here is that strangers can connect with your child by using fake usernames or profile names. Such activities should be avoided as it can easily lead to incidents of cyberbullying and online abuse.

• Children these days are quite desperate to get more likes and comments on the stuff they post on social media. This includes pictures, videos, etc. In order to get this done, kids ask their social media fellows to like and comment on their activities. However, they are unaware of the fact that such actions can lead to abusive comments and hate speeches. Parents should make their children understand that social ranks do not evaluate their value in real life.

• Never encourage your child to physically attack someone if they are bullied. It is always a good and wise move to inform an adult such as a teacher or parent about the incident. Reacting aggressively against a bully can further worsen the situation.

Besides these tips, parents should gear up with smart parenting tools like REVE Antivirus Parental Control software that allows parents to keep a tab on the online activities of their children. They can see which type of websites are being browsed by the children and can get alerts on their mobile phone if any inappropriate website is accessed.