Digital Parenting Tricks: What should you do if your child is a bystander?

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August 29, 2018

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Digital Parenting Tricks: What should you do if your child is a bystander?

At some point, your children might be bystanders to cyberbullying. Bystanders can either be part of the bullying problem or an important part of the solution.

Although bystanders are not the primary targets of bullying, they are still affected. In fact, bystanders can suffer from guilt, anxiety, depression and feelings of helplessness.

Teaching your children how to approach such a situation can make a lot of difference for everyone involved.

Here are our consultant psychologist’s tips on how to talk to kids about online bullying:

If your kid is younger than 13, the first thing they should do is tell you or another trusted adult about the situation. Older teens need to know they too have this option available to them. Also:

they should never join in and never bully another kid

they can seek advice from you or another trusted adult whenever they witness cyberbullying

they can talk to the victims and help them feel better

they can call the bully out: This is bullying, you need to stop!

they can save evidence (screenshots) so they can help the victims later (reporting the incident)

This article is part of the Digital Parenting Tricks series for the Bitdefender Parental Control* feature. Bitdefender worked with a psychologist to create a cheat sheet for parents and offer them some guidance on how to deal with some of the most troublesome digital challenges of our time. Because we want to use technology to find new ways to stand up to this kind of behaviour.

*The Detection of Cyberbullying and Online Predators functionality is no longer available in Bitdefender products.

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The meaning of Bitdefender’s mascot, the Dacian Draco, a symbol that depicts a mythical animal with a wolf’s head and a dragon’s body, is “to watch” and to “guard with a sharp eye.”

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