Cyberbullying is a criminal act that can lead your victim to suicide. Most of the people involved in this type of act are young (both the aggressor and the victim ), and this is due to a lack of communication with their parents.
If you notice or believe that your child may be facing such acts , we recommend that you read below, as we will explain everything you need so you can take quick actions and prevent any accident.
Recall that harassment affects the mind first , and even if it is virtual, it may have unpleasant consequences. As responsible for these young people we must be aware of any situation.
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What is cyberbullying? The new form of digital harassment
We are currently witnessing many cyber attacks considered cyberbullying, but this goes beyond a simple comment on social networks. This type of attack makes use of all telematic means, such as mobile telephony, online video games and the Internet.
Its main objective is to disturb the tranquility of the victim causing psychological stress , which if left unattended in time can present many risks. Remember that each person is a world, and that our mind works 24 hours a day, so the victim can react in any way.
The reality is that such attacks are received mainly by young people, and only by a small adult population. Different cases can be seen, which is an attack by adults on children, or also by minors at both ends.
In most of the cases registered a level of aggression is shown in both parties, both in the aggressor and in the victim, being a characteristic quite alarming in the minors.
This cyber attack totally torments the mental tranquility of the young person or child, where can respond very aggressively to such threats . The affected person is driven to commit acts of despair, to assault another person or even kill her.
According to studies carried out by INTECO, it is considered that the aggressor drains all his family or environmental situation through the Internet, harming another person.
What are the main causes that can make you suffer from cyberbullying?
This is very serious, so we should always know what their causes are, in order to stop them in time, and then not too late. Recall that the psychological damage is one of the strongest.
Social networks and Internet
Every day social networks grow on the Internet, and also the number of users. These allow us to communicate via instant messaging with anyone; but as it is very beneficial, it is also used for the persecution of people, and the sending of messages considered as cyberbullying .
High traffic for youth and children
We support the virtual world for all ages, but in a moderate way, assuming that young people spend a lot of time in this medium , interacting with many people and absorbing unfit personalities and behaviors.
We must know that in this world we can find many things, as well as many people, so we must control that our youth access the right places .
Lack of parental and teacher control
Everything must be controlled, and parents are the main drivers of such access to Internet , but today it has been observed that many representatives give uncontrolled freedom to youth, allowing them to do nothing pleasant activities .
Parents should guide their children, so that know how to distinguish between good and not so good.
Lack of education in values
This is one of the main characteristics of an aggressor, both in the cyber world and the physical world. Adolescents unconsciously comply with what is known by psychology as the butterfly effect , where the minimum they receive can cause a great disaster in the future.
For this reason, experts in youth education express that young people should be included in conversations where all values are mentioned, and that they can be practiced at home.
Who are the most vulnerable people to bullying in social networks?
Of the 100% of a population affected by cyberbullying, 75% are young people and teenagers. This is because it is young people who use social networks the most. According to surveys conducted by schools in Spain, children and adolescents spend more time on their phone during recess time than in other activities.
Social networks have wrapped up a large part of human life , there are people who can spend up to 24 hours on them, and it’s because they have allowed us to connect with the people we love but we don’t have close.
Even so, and recognizing that it is a very useful tool even for personal entrepreneurship, it must be controlled; because the Internet is the one that mostly instructs us, also becomes one of the potential influences on our behavior.
A clear example of the above we see in the game of The Blue Whale, driven in 2016 by a young man who took advantage of many of his players felt a void or lack of love to take them to do very satanic activities, to the point of making them feel that to win the game it was necessary to commit suicide.
Such a game was one of the main global alarms, where discussions were held about what is influenced by Internet and how social media developers can prevent these acts.
Cyberbullying consequences What damage can they cause to their victims?
This type of emotional stress, can bring with it many eventualities with no pleasant consequences, so if the young person suffers from some of those mentioned below, must go immediately to a specialist, so he can be treated on time:
- School absence : When the child or young person feels threatened, their main action is to flee from these people, as a way to escape the problem.
- Consumption of substances harmful to health: Such stress causes anxiety, and people who suffer from anxiety attacks tend to be driven to consume substances that harm their health.
- Depression: For feeling so threatened and not finding someone to drain all those feelings, they tend to be depressive, and this should be treated immediately, because people suffering from depression often commit suicide.
- Low self-esteem: When the situation of the young person or the child is so frequent, we see that it shows emotions that make it feel inferior to others . Mostly it can be detected by listening to the affected person speak.
- Change in attitude: A change in attitude is shown, because he does not want to involve anyone in his problems, showing himself aggressive and lonely.
- They move away from their parents: When the young man feels that his parents will not be able to understand him or that he can act in a way he does not want, he prefers to scare them with aggressive actions against him of them.
- Suicide: This is a consequence of everything mentioned, and in this phase there is no going back.
How to protect yourself or your children from cyberbullying in social networks?
In order to respond against cyberbullying, and protect the people we love we must guide them with the following advice:
Do not panic
Stalkers always seek to frighten their victim , causing fear to isolate themselves from others and thus achieve their goal. As parents we must give our children enough confidence so that they do not act incorrectly in this situation. Here family communication plays a vital role .
Block all media with the stalker
Today almost all social networks allow us to block people who threaten us, so we must activate this function whenever we feel cornered by someone. Remember that the media are the main tools to communicate between people.
So we must instruct the kids to learn how to take care of those people we don’t know, and still want to communicate with us and know our personal information.
Protect our contact data
We must protect our personal data , because the stalker will always look for our contacts, in order to contact us anonymously. Whenever we are in public places we must not dictate neither our address, nor telephone data , or social networks.
Improve the privacy of our social media profiles
It is advisable to increase the privacy of our social networks , in this way no person who is outside our contact information can contact us without our permission.
Let’s use strong passwords
We have to understand that one of the main goals of the aggressor is to seek to humiliate his victim, so that more and more attempts are being made to hack accounts of other users in order to make publications quite humiliating people .
Report inappropriate contents
We can use our social networks like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter to denounce those people who publish offensive or inappropriate content. Such a complaint involves the person’s complete blockade .
Let us notify the harassment of the competent authorities
This should be the primary thing we should do when the situation escapes our hands. When contacting the authorities we must inform everything that affects us and how it attacks us, they will legally protect us and apply the corresponding penalty to the stalker.
Can you report online bullying in Spain?
If we have any suspicion that someone is being the victim of a cyberbully, we should know which institutions to go to at the moment.
It is really difficult to prevent the child or adolescent from entering the Internet . The web and all its services themselves are not bad , but as we know it is a world and therefore we can find anything, also people who upset the peace in torment and the safe in insecurity.
This is why we cannot take cyberbullying as something simple and temporary , so we must take measures in the face of such risk. In Spain, state institutions have been adapting to these new threats, so we must turn to them at the first sign of online harassment.
Such institutions are the Technological Investigation Brigade of the National Police and the Telematic Crimes Group of the Civil Guard , which offer different services to protect the victim.
What is the maximum penalty for different types of digital harassment in Spain and the European Union?
Harassment is a crime, considering that the aggressor creates an insistent and repeated persecution against the victim, altering his daily life, and this is regulated in article 172.ter of Criminal Code.
In the aforementioned article it has been established that the aggressor must be punished with a prison sentence of 3 months to two years , and additional penalties may be applied in case of special victims, such as minors old.
The criminal code names three types of harassment:
- Generic Harassment with freedom
- Sexual harassment against sexual freedom
- Harassment in work environment