Cyberbullying should not be underestimated.
Cyberbullying has been gaining momentum lately and is a direct threat to the mental and sometimes physical health of today's children. Anna Kuznetsova, the President's Commissioner for Children's Rights, spoke about bullying on the Web. According to the Children's Ombudsman, sometimes parents underestimate the threat of bullying their children, which can subsequently lead to serious problems. At the same time, adults can often prevent such a development of events.
“Unfortunately, we give our children too little real tools for life in this environment, which becomes in fact real. Sometimes offline skirmishes go online and vice versa - skirmishes on the Internet, when children do not feel and do not fully answer for their words, which they write on a social network, write on someone else's page. Sometimes they are not responsible for their actions and do not see the consequences until the end. But there are adults, they understand what could be behind this, "RIA Novosti quotes Kuznetsova.
To prevent bullying, Anna Kuznetsova identifies three conditions. First, parents should not underestimate the risks of the situation.
"They do not understand that this is real stress for a child. And today's research confirms this. When interviewing children in the same educational organization, children say that there is cyberbullying and there is bullying. Unfortunately, adults, teachers, other adults, who participate in the organization of the educational process say that this is not the case, thereby underestimating all the threats and risks, "Kuznetsova cited as an example.
The second solution Anna Kuznetsova sees is the creation of a favorable environment in real life. The Ombudsman notes that it is important to build relationships in such a way that such a model of behavior associated with bullying is unacceptable, and any conflicts are resolved at an early stage. And the third condition is a favorable atmosphere in the family.
"A good, constructive, supportive and welcoming environment in the family. The child can tell at an early stage that something went wrong. When these three components are in place, then we can say that the child is safe."
Kuznetsova noted that if children are bullied on the Internet, they can contact hotlines. The Ombudsman noted that operators must necessarily be professionals, because “this is work with personal data, this is work with the personality of a child. And here there must be unequivocally professionals who, unfortunately, are not enough today."