5 Effects of Cyberbullying on Children With Proven Solutions

Cyberbullying is linked to adverse mental health conditions. This is why we have decided to touch on the effects of cyberbullying on your child and the solutions. In this current day and age, with the invention of technology, it’s no news that more children have access to the internet than ever before. While this allows them access to knowledge faster and makes for easier communication and social interactions, it has negative effects. One of which is becoming victims of cyberbullying amongst other things.

Before we talk about the effects of cyberbullying, what is Cyberbullying?

What is Cyberbullying?

Cyberbullying is the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature. It is an aggressive and intentional act carried out by a group or an individual. Cyberbullying is an attack carried out repeatedly against a victim who cannot easily defend himself or herself.

Anyone, especially children, can be a target of cyberbullying with the increasing rate of internet users. This is the reason we need to protect our children against the social effects of cyberbullying. As a majority of them do not have minds developed well enough to ward off the real-life effect of cyberbullying.

Social Media and Cyberbullying

While cyberbullying can take many forms and occur through different mediums, cyberbullying majorly occurs through social media platforms. These platforms include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, Myspace, Wechat, Whatsapp, etc. Although cyberbullying is not limited to the use of these platforms. It won’t be wrong to say that there’s an increase in cyberbullying on social media platforms than through other mediums.

Forms of Cyberbullying

There are different forms through which a person can become a victim of cyberbullying. We have listed 3 below to give you an insight into what Cyberbullying is about.

Harassment

This form of cyberbullying involves the bully sending offensive messages repeatedly to the victim. Often, these messages are rude, abusive, hurtful, and threatening.

Exclusion

This is intentionally excluding a person from a conversation, usually in an online group. It is carried out by purposely ignoring their contributions to the topic being discussed and acting as though their contributions are invalid or invincible.

Doxing

This form of cyberbullying involves searching for and sharing personal information, pictures, or videos of the targeted victim, publicly. Often, these pictures and videos are demeaning and considered embarrassing by the victim. The effect of this form of cyberbullying is that it turns them into a laughingstock among their peers.

Children lack maturity concerning cognitive processing, peer pressure, and rational decision making among other things.

Various studies in recent times have shown that there is an increasing rate of Cyberbullying against children, especially teens. Few of these studies have linked these results to the increasing rate of suicides and attempted suicides carried out by members of this age group.

This is all the more reason, parents and guardians should strive to understand the effects of Cyberbullying on a child. We believe it is a responsibility you owe these young ones. There are emotional, behavioural, and psychological effects of cyberbullying. We will be talking about these effects and their solutions.

Effects of Cyberbullying on Mental Health

The effects of cyberbullying on mental health are rather dangerous. Our mental health affects how we think, feel and act. It contributes majorly to how we handle stress, how we relate with others, and how we make choices. When children become victims of cyberbullying, it affects their mental health and goes on to affect the natural choices they make. Often, this leads to them becoming withdrawn from society, which leaves them feeling alone and sad, allowing depression to creep in.

Real-Life Effects Of Cyberbullying On a Child

The effects of cyberbullying cannot be separated from each other, as most times one effect will lead to another. Hence you can be sure that each stated effect affects their emotions, behaviours, and psychology.

The effects of Cyberbullying include but are not limited to

Low Self-esteem

Our self-esteem is the opinion we have of ourselves as individuals. It affects our perspective of ourselves and life in general. Now, when our self-esteem is low, it makes us see life and ourselves in a more negative light. It causes us to lose confidence in who we are and what we have to offer to the world around us. Low self-esteem spikes the feeling of incompetence and allows us to term ourselves as underachievers.

The result? We never think we are worth much, hence submitting ourselves to the mercy of others. It causes us to accept everybody’s definition of us. And that is a pretty bad place to be. This is what these children are subjected to when they suffer cyberbullying.

Decrease in Academic Performance

As we stated earlier, the effects of cyberbullying cannot be separated from each other. Hence, it’s only a matter of time before a child who suffers from Low self-esteem starts to do worse academically. This is especially true if the perpetrators of cyberbullying are students at your child’s school. Yes, children can be cyberbullies and perpetrators just as much as they can be victims. 

Increased Stress and Anxiety

Feeling tense, nervous, or unable to relax becomes the result of being attacked with texts or threats. Or, being laughed to scorn online, by those who attend the same class as you. It is not abnormal to feel stressed and suffer anxiety when you have been a victim of cyberbullying. However, feeling this way can easily lead to a mirage of problems.

There’s nothing as bad as feeling the world is against you because you interact daily with the perpetrators of your cyberbullying experience. As we know, this particular effect of cyberbullying can become a disorder in itself when it becomes severe. This is why parents and guardians need to find means to protect children the best way they can.

Depression

Depression is an emotional state characterized by a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. It can interfere with your decision to carry out day-to-day activities since it causes you to lose interest in things. Depression as we know is a rather very serious disorder that can lead to suicidal attempts if not managed properly. This is one of the effects of cyberbullying that children should not have to go through. 

Suicide

Every year, the world becomes more vocal about how dangerous cyberbullying affects students and children. This is because more children commit suicide not being able to bear the effects of cyberbullying. Consider these cases of suicides, the majority of which were carried out by teens.

Unfortunately, cyberbullying is not something they can protect themselves from as much as they should. While society can and should work towards protecting children from being victims of cyberbullying, parents and guardians have a role to play.

How can Parents/Guardians Protect Children against the Effects of Cyberbullying?

There isn’t so much a parent or guardian can do to protect their children against the effects of cyberbullying, but there is “the little” they can that will go a long way to help these children. Of course, taking their phones away or denying them access to the internet isn’t much of an option these days. This is why we recommend the use of Parentyn.

Parentyn

Parentyn is a parental control and remote monitoring application. It affords parents and guardians the opportunity of being alerted concerning the screen activities of their wards/children. To that effect, parents and guardians alike, can protect their children from online predators, cyberbullying, and inappropriate content. How? It allows parents to control the access their children have to certain sites and pages on their mobile phones.

If you’d like to take it up a notch and find out who is calling your child and who your child is calling, well, it does that too. To find out more about this app, you can click here.

Having a parental control app like Parentyn can help you control your child’s access to the internet. And that’s great. But how do you identify if your child is already suffering the effects of cyberbullying? And what other ways can you help protect them from being cyberbullied?

Teach Them The Importance of Privacy settings

It might seem trivial for a solution. But, privacy settings help us indicate who should have access to our profiles, personal information, pictures, and videos. It helps us choose who we want to share our updated information with. Many children who use the internet are not aware that there are settings that can protect their privacy. It is your duty as a parent or guardian to teach them the importance of privacy settings. And of course, how they can make use of it.

Teach Them To Limit What They Share Online

Having limited information online and thinking carefully before making posts will help mitigate cyberbullying. Also, teach them to be wary of who they chat with and on what topic. Being careful of their choice of word combinations when chatting online will go a long way. Cyberbullies who use Outing and doxing will hardly find embarrassing information to use to cyberbully.

The Block Function

Among those we allow through our privacy settings to view our personal information, some can become a pain. Teach your children that they can mute/block any account through which they are being bullied. That is in fact what the block function is made for.

Effects of Cyberbullying – Signs that Your Child may Already be a Victim

Often, children tend to be secretive about what is going on in their lives. And as such, they’ll probably never tell you they’re being cyberbullied. Some of them, have no idea what cyberbullying is. Hence, they assume that harassments and other forms of cyberbullying are the norm and just consider themselves unfortunate. Whether they are aware or not, you might never really know that your child is a victim of cyberbullying. This is why you should look out for the following signs:

Feeling Depressed or Antisocial

It’s easy to spot when a very jovial child withdraws into their shell. However, it is difficult for the ones who never really were. Either way, you can still tell when your child suddenly becomes withdrawn and responds negatively to social interactions. 

Loss of Interest in Hobbies

They are called hobbies for a reason. If your child suddenly stops doing what they love, it might be an indicator that something is wrong. You should try as much as possible to find out what.

Nervous or Scared about School or Outside

When cyberbullies are people your child has daily interactions with at school or in common areas, they become scared of these places. So pay attention to this pointer and don’t just write your child off as being uninterested in academics. As this might not be the case.

Making Passing Statements about Suicide

A child is expected to still be excited about the prospects of their future. When this, however, is not the case instead suicide comments are made it should be checked. It is important to understand that this should require immediate action as it is a major red flag.

It is important to note that these signs are only indicators that you should pay more attention to your child. They are not in themselves proof of cyberbullying.

The Effects of Cyberbullying on your Child and the Solutions – Summary

We hope that the information we have given has helped you understand the effects of cyberbullying on your child. And the solutions we have suggested help put both you and your child in the know on how to combat cyberbullying.

Please note, as a parent or guardian, your supervision of your child’s internet activities is essential. Granted, you can’t follow them around asking to see their internet history. You cannot also go through their chat since you’re busy. Heck, they might even revolt even if you have enough time on your hands to do so. Still, you can view their internet history, and get notified of sites they visit online through the help of Parentyn. 

Don’t forget, there are long-term effects of cyberbullying. While we hope that countries implement legislation against perpetrators of cyberbullying, all your child has is you?