What is Cyberbullying?

Cyberbullying is bullying that takes place over digital devices like cell phones, computers, and tablets. Cyberbullying can occur through SMS, Text, and apps, or online in social media, forums, or gaming where people can view, participate in, or share content. Cyberbullying includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else. It can include sharing personal or private information about someone else causing embarrassment or humiliation. As a global problem, cyberbullying puts parents, teachers and children in a difficult situation around the world. What can be recommended for this issue, which especially concerns parents?

How Parents Can Stop Cyberbullying

1. Keep the computer in a common area of the home. Do not allow it in your children’s bedrooms. Monitor their online usage.

2. Learn how various social networking apps and sites work. Become familiar with Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Ask your children if they will show you their profile pages.

3. Talk regularly and specifically with your children about online issues. Let them know they can come to you for help if anything is inappropriate, upsetting, or dangerous.

4. Build trust with your children. Set time limits, explain your reasons for them, and discuss rules for online safety and Internet use. Ask your children to contribute to establishing the rules; then they’ll be more inclined to follow them.

5. Tell your children not to respond to any cyberbullying threats or comments online. However, do not delete any of the messages. Instead, print out all the messages, including the email addresses or social media handles of the cyberbully. You will need the messages to verify and prove there is cyberbullying.

6. Don’t overreact by blaming your children. If they are being bullied, be supportive and understanding. Find out how long the bullying has been going on and ensure that you’ll work together to find a solution. Let your children know they are not to blame for being bullied.

7. Don’t underreact by telling your children to “shrug it off” or just deal with the bullying. The emotional pain of being bullied is very real and can have long-lasting effects. Don’t tease them about it or respond with a “kids will be kids” attitude.

8. Don’t threaten to take away your children’s phone or computer if they come to you with a problem. This only forces kids to be more secretive.

9. Talk to your school’s guidance counselors so they can keep an eye out for bullying during the school day.

10. If there are threats of physical violence or the bullying continues to escalate, get law enforcement involved

CB4PARENTS project

Training of Parents in the Fight Against Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying, a global problem that the youth and parents have difficulty with, is often included in project topics and school curriculum. The Cyberbullying project is among our ongoing projects which is being carried out by partner countries such as Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, UK and Turkey. CB4PARNETS project aims to improve the education methods for parents. This project will serve at the same time to disseminate the fight against cyberbullying across Europe. Partner countries aimed to develop 3 intellectual outputs in 24 months. There are: Common Curriculum, Digital Training Materials and E-Learning Portal. To find out more about CB4PARENTS project, please visit the https://cb4parents.com website.