Digital Safety Tips: Protecting Students from Cyberbullying

Digital Safety Tips: Protecting Students from Cyberbullying

Advanced technology, early ownership of digital devices, and constant connectivity has increased the incidence of Cyberbullying. Cyberbullying consists of harmful acts, repeatedly and intentionally performed electronically using digital devices and on social media sites. It can include acts like harassment, defamation, cyberstalking, sexting, and outing.

Victims of cyberbullying often suffer from depression, anxiety, and social ostracism, and may have suicidal ideations or attempt suicide. It can even impact students’ academic performance and participation in school.

Because of the impact cyberbullying has on academia, and since much of cyberbullying stems from school, it is important that teachers and school authorities address the issue of cyberbullying in schools.

Keeping Students Safe

Education is the key step to keeping our students safe.  Teachers can empower students by instilling in them the knowledge and skills essential to ensuring digital safety. This includes:

Creating Awareness:

Discuss cyberbullying. Educate students about its negative effects and related legal issues. Model the positive uses of technology and explore how students can use technology to help others.

Respect Others:

Instruct students to treat others with kindness and respect, both inside and outside the digital world. Ask students to put themselves in the place of a “victim” to understand how it feels. This encourages students be empathetic. Remind students that all individuals, though different, deserve to be treated with equal respect. Incorporate group activities to encourage students to interact with others and to help them:

• Accept individual differences and contributions
• Understand different perspectives
• Acknowledge, tolerate and respect diversity

Protect Self:

Help students protect themselves against acts of cyberbullying by teaching them how to follow these steps:

• Set passwords for all devices and keep devices locked at all times. Passwords should be kept safe from everyone except parents or guardians.
• Be selective in choosing online friends and deciding who can view your digital activity. Set privacy settings to ensure maximum privacy.
• Post carefully. Information becomes public once posted, and can be forwarded to others.
• Avoid posting or sharing false or harmful information about others.
• Keep parents and teachers informed about digital activity and report any unwanted messages.

Handling Cyberbullying:

Educate students on how to respond when facing cyberbullying. They can be instructed to:

• Avoid reacting or retaliating to messages, as this is often exactly what the bully wants.
• Avoid turning from victim to bully. Sometimes when retaliating or trying to get “even” with their bullies, the student may unconsciously become the bully.
• Be proactive. When acts of cyberbullying go unchecked, bullies become more confident and cruel in their actions. Use the available tech tools to block or report the offender.

Encourage Reporting:

Students often fail to report the abuse due to fear of retribution and confiscation of their devices by parents. Help them understand that it’s safe and okay to report the abuse. To encourage reporting, teachers can:

• Make students feel safe and secure in the classroom by creating a positive environment. Be clear and empathetic and establish open channels of communication so that students can freely approach the teachers.
• Do not minimize or trivialize students’ problems. Instead, assure students that incidents will be looked into seriously. This helps to raise the students’ confidence in the teacher.
• Teach students how to save evidence of cyberbullying to enable authorities to take action against the perpetrator.
• Seek help from others like parents, school authorities, and in cases of threats of harm, from law agencies

Establish Rules:

Collaborate with school authorities and develop firm rules and policies about technology use, boundaries and acceptable cyber-behaviors and activities. When making policies, ensure that:

• The policies are specific and clear, and address issues in detail.
• It holds the offender accountable for their actions.

Interventions

Create restorative interventions as this helps to reduce further occurrences of cyberbullying. Plan for activities that instill students with responsibility, empathy forgiveness, and commitment to change.

Being responsible digital citizens engaging in appropriate digital activity is the key to protecting students from cyberbullying.

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