Cyberbullying Among School Children

This article discusses the growing incidence of cyberbullying among school children and its possible solutions. It also highlights the present situation, problem, and proposal to prevent cyberbullying. The article suggests monitoring online activity, building a positive climate, and talking to children as possible solutions. It also recommends using apps like Nischint, mSpy, and Mobicip to track text messages and filter search settings. The article concludes that cyberbullying can be prevented with strong backing from government policies.

Running head: CYBERBULLYING
Cyberbullying Among School Children
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Cyberbullying is a sort of bullying that occurs over the digital media through the digital
devices like tablets, cell phones and computers. Cyberbullying occurs through online social
platforms, social media apps, SMS and text. These are main places where cyberbullying takes
place because kids, teens, and even adults communicate and share information with each other or
within a group through social networking. Whereas, cyberbullying involves sharing, posting and
sending false, negative, harmful content relating to some person. It also involves personal and
private information of a person which lead to humiliation and embarrassment of the targeted
person. However, some sorts of cyberbullying crosses the limits and it becomes a criminal and
unlawful act (Kowalski et al 2012).
Present situation- in the present generation, the bullying does not end within the school
premises. However, the bullying gets to another level when the child or the teen reaches home
and gets himself or herself hooked to the online social media. Now a day the school children at
the age of 12 to 17 are so engrossed with the social that they often neglect their studies
(Cyberbullying Research Center 2017). The time they get is mostly spent on the social media
chatting with friends and sending texts, sharing pictures, giving status updates and updating
profile picture with different style or pose. This excessive social media usage somewhat makes
them more unsocial these children often avoid the face to face talk. This growing tendency of
staying online on the digital social media makes them vulnerable to online abuse and bullying by
their peers and strangers. Social media platforms like Facebook often lets the teens to make
friends and chat with unknown people over the internet (Kwan and Skoric 2013). These
conversations between the teen and the stranger often ends up into disastrous outcomes. These
strangers through their evil intentions and ways often extract personal information from the
targeted child which lead to harassment, embarrassment and humiliation.

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Problem- A report from the Cyberbullying Research Center reveal that 33.9% of the
school goers between the age of 12 to 17 were the victims of cyberbullying and at the same time
11.6% of the students also at the same age group revealed that they have engaged in the
cyberbullying act (Cyberbullying Research Center, 2017). Cyberbullying is different from the
convention and traditional bullying styles because it occurs 24/7. For the victims of
cyberbullying, there is no running away and escape, because the bullying is not confined within
the playground or the school premises. Thus, whenever a kid or a teen comes online and
connects to the social media there is a strong chance that the teen or the kid is vulnerable. The
worst part is that cyberbullying has strong connections with the child exploitation. Studies have
found that there are certain people called child predators that groom and influence the child to
take explicit photos of themselves. These photos are then shared by these child predators on the
social media which further leads to harassment and bullying within the peer groups (Rebocho
and Gonçalves 2012). Due to these activities the child starts to suffer from depression and often
gets engaged into self-harm and commit suicide.
Possible solutions- Cyberbullying is an over the internet act, although there is no
stringent policy taken up the by the government. Schools have anti-cyberbullying provisions in
place but they lack the vision and are not effective. The biggest challenge is to gather
information which kids are especially getting targeted from cyberbullying. Knowing this fact can
solve the 50% of the problem. There are several strategies to and ways to prevent cyberbullying
although total obliteration is not possible (Slonje, Smith and FriséN 2013).
Talk- Every psychologist opines that perfect way to guide and help a child is to
effectively communicate with the child. Patiently asking the child about the associated problems
of cyberbullying and whether he or she knows anybody who is getting cyberbullied. What are the

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necessary steps that the child must take when he faces such a situation and whether the child
even actively or passively participates in cyberbullying? (Appel et al. 2014).
Monitoring the online activity- Although stooping cyberbullying is not feasible but
actively monitoring the online presence of a child can actively solve a large number of problem.
There is an app for the apple phones called Pumpic. This app can actively monitor the call logs
text messages, other online activity on several online platforms like Instagram and Facebook
(Bastiaensens et al. 2014).
Building a positive climate- considering the fact that the incidence of cyberbullying
actively takes place within the school children. Thus, the school teachers can organize a parent
teacher meeting where discussions can be held on cyberbullying. Online forums can also be
created where the cyberbullying reports can be placed (Hinduja and Patchin 2012).
Proposal- considering from the point of a parent, it is depressing to see a child suffering
from the incidence of cyberbullying. Regarding that the school children spent most of the time
online thus, actively monitoring the activity of the child can effectively reduce the problem. If
the kids access the social media via phone, then there are certain apps like Nischint, mSpy, and
Mobicip that supports both the Android and iOS. These apps can actively track the text
messages, can filter the search setting and block offensive content over the internet. However, if
the child is accessing the social media via a computer, then there is software like Qustodio which
is free and it actively monitors the what the child is viewing, whom they are talking to and also
the timing of the usage. Hence, after the school the child’s majority of time is spent over the
internet and monitoring the activity can effectively reduce and prevent the occurrences of
cyberbullying. This also reduces the depressions that the parents go through when they have no
idea what is happening with their child. However, with the online monitoring app the parents

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will be able to monitor and take care of the problem before it becomes a serious issue (Galán-
García et al. 2016).
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above disclosure it can be concluded that cyberbullying is an evil
aspect of the internet and the growing incidence of the problem is due to the inefficiency on the
part of the school, government and parents. The incidence of cyberbullying can be prevented but
it needs a strong backing by the government policies for complete eradication.

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Reference
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