How can parents and/or educational institutions help guard against online harassment of their children/students?
Looking back at the good-ole-days in elementary school, social networking was just starting to get popular and MSN or Club Penguin were the most lit sites to reach. However, just because they were fun and easy to use doesn’t mean it was the safest website. You always have to consider that there is the dark side to online interaction.
As a parent or a teacher you are unable to track what the child or teenager might be doing on these sites. For example, when I had MSN my mom had no clue who I was talking to or what I was saying. As a parent, that can be pretty scary, even if you trust your child completely. However, we don’t live in a age anymore where we aren’t able to track what our children/ students are doing on social media. There are so many ways for parents to see what there kids are up to just by searching the child’s name on any social media site they may be on. With phones, parents are able limit their children by only letting them call or text (no data). With online interaction, parents can track what their child is doing by checking search history, following their child on social media, check their accounts on their phone, register them yourself with an email address you (the parent) have created, along with a password, and much more!
When being a teacher in this situation is a bit more complicated because you have to be engaged with your students but not too engaged where it may seem creepy or show favouritism. A way of doing this is talking to your students one-on-one while asking them how things are going and if they need help with anything. As well as keeping up to day with their daily moods, such as if they seem silent one day or seem off another. Constant engagement is a major key (“to success”).
Now what this can do is prevent your child or student from being absorbed to online interaction and eventually getting harassed. In high school, there was a website called Ask.fm, where anyone could comment anonymously about an individual person. This has got to be the worst social media site anyone created. This is a website that attracts those who have the intent to make fun of someone and harass the shit out of them. Another thing is people who have already been bullied before in elementary and high school would sign up for this website hoping someone would say something nice about them. Well people didn’t.
To summarize the answer to this question. There are many ways for parents and teachers to prevent their children/students from online harassment. Here is a list of things you can do:
- Monitor the child’s accounts (simply type their name and search)
- Don’t let them have certain social media accounts that are popular for harassment. (e.g Twitter and the use of sub tweeting)
- If you do let them have a social media account, help them create it using a email address and password you approve of.
- Adjust your child’s privacy and interaction setting on the site or app. (e.g On Instagram you can turn off comments, block/report people, have your account on private, etc.)
- Limit their time on social media (e.g only have an hour or 2 of phone time)
