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Cyber Bullying
In today's digital world, cyber-bullying is devastating - it can cause severe emotional trauma and even suicide because it's anonymous; there's no audience - bullies operate in private with no one to see the crime unfold and cyber bullies use all forms of technology to wreck havoc on their victims - including video, email, instant messages, texting and posts to social media websites.
As parents, it's important to understand cyberbullying, do all you can to prevent it from happening to your child or intervene in a timely manner if your child becomes a victim.
Below are a few cyber bullying videos from YouTube. We also developed GuardChild's Tips you can use to protect your child from Cyber Bullying and action to take if your child becomes a victim.
GuardChild Cyber Bullying Tips:
- Install Software - Purchase and install parental control software to monitor what your child does online and with their cell phones.
- Computer Location - Keep you family computer in a central location.
- Talk - Spend time talking with your child regularly about cyber-bullying and other online dangers.
- Educate - Develop your technical skills so you better understand today's technology, chat rooms, and social networks.
- Monitor - Don't feel like you're invading your child's privacy - Monitor what they are doing on the Internet and with their cell phones. It's a parental responsibility to know what your child is doing.
- Privacy - Tell your child never to email, IM, chat or post negative information about others.
- Internet Safety - Set clear rules about Internet use. Tell your child to keep their email address, passwords, and personal information - including family information private.
- Encourage Communication - Let your child know to come to you if they feel they are a victim of cyber bullying or any cyber harassment.
- State Laws - Check into what the laws in your state are about cyber-bullying.
- Have a Plan - Prepare an action plan to initiate should your child become a victim of cyber bullying. Collect evidence, authorities to contact school and police, and changing email and phone contact information.
- Block Contact - If your child is being bullied - contact you cell and Internet Service provider (ISP) and block all email and phone numbers from the bully.
- Automate Your Monitoring - Use the FREE Google Alerts to manage, monitor and automatically send you updates via email on any search term (your child's name), at any chosen interval, including filtering alerts for video content.
- Research - Search your child’s name and various spellings of it on Google and other major search engines. Look in video sharing sites like YouTube, MySpace, etc.
- Change - Change your child's email address and get a new cell phone number - AND - keep both private.
- Save Information - Tell your child to save anything received, photos, emails, chat conversations, etc., that is harmful, threatening, hateful, or otherwise discomforting. This is evidence that can be used if the situation escalates.
- Contact Websites - If offensive material is posted on MySpace, YouTube or Facebook - Contact to have the content removed.
- Contact Authorities - Contact the police and school authorities if the bullying becomes threatening - it's illegal!
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