How I’m making sure I don’t raise a cyberbully

My niece loves Instagram, except for the occasional rude comments. Last month, Instagram was the latest social media platform to try and address the challenge of cyberbullying with a customizable comments filter based on objectionable words or phrases and with this month being National Bullying Prevention month — cyberbullying continues to stay in the limelight.

Online harassment is a big problem for social networks, so bad that social networks like Facebook and Twitter have teams dedicated to fighting the uphill battle of proactively stopping online abuse. It is also a big problem for parents. The internet makes it easy to be cruel and a bully, and I don’t want my kids or niece to be one of the 35 percent of youth who say that they have bullied people on social media.

{mosads}Bullying can happen anywhere, at any age, but nowadays, with so much information being shared, it seems like the topic of bullying comes up a lot more than it did when I was a kid. Do you ever find yourself comparing your own childhood to your children’s experience? I think about how I’m raising my daughters compared to how my parents raised me all the time. Does today’s technology make parenting harder?

It certainly makes it different, with issues that none of us experienced. Online interaction is a big part of our children’s lives, often spread across multiple communities. Unfortunately, social media can be fickle and shallow, and can lead to taunts and other cruelty that make up cyberbullying.

Since people at church found out what I do for a living, I’ve become the de-facto person to ask about security.  Luckily, I love what I do, so I don’t mind.  Just recently I had a lengthy discussion about cyberbullying with the kids of some fellow churchgoers, who are around 12 and 13 years old.

They were discussing the possibility that one of the kids had been cyberbullied. As we were talking we realized she had indeed experienced bullying, but she worried in her efforts to defend herself that perhaps she had bullied right back.  It can indeed be a circular discussion. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell who “started it,” but what matters is that parents need to set boundaries and communicate them.  

While my oldest isn’t quite ready for her first phone, it’s only a matter of time.  My concern is that she hasn’t fully developed an understanding of how things can come across differently in online communication versus in person or even on the phone.  Now to be fair, I have co-workers who could use a reminder of that as well.  While I doubt my daughters will sound like one of those kids screaming in my ear when playing games online, I definitely want to make sure they know how to get across what they mean to when communicating online.

Children are picking up and dropping social media platforms faster than most of us can track, and on these platforms they are interacting both with their peers and with larger communities. Most parents say they are following their children on social media, but often only on the platforms the parents know or and participate in, like Facebook.

With my kids, I made it clear from day one that the phone, tablet, and computer belong to me, not to them. My kids know that as a parent, part of my job is to keep an eye on what they are doing and I take an active role in doing so.  Watching how they interact with each other online is possibly more important than in real life, because online there are often no adults to supervise and intervene when needed. And because children haven’t yet developed the intricacies of conflict resolution, things can spin out of control too quickly for them to appropriately handle.

Before we even started with devices and online activities, my wife and I discussed some key rules with our kids. Here are a few of our rules that may work for you, too:

1. We get to review anything and everything on the device, at our discretion.

2. Zero tolerance for cruelty towards others, with the consequence of immediate loss of device or account.

3. If you are angry or upset, take a break before posting and come talk to us.  Giving them a way to vent and work out how they feel in person can help develop healthy coping mechanisms.

4. We will listen to any and all concerns, questions, or comments you have, and respond thoughtfully without overreacting.

I’m big on helping my kids learn lessons themselves instead of just preaching and setting rules that they can easily disconnect from. If I witness one of my kids making inappropriate comments, I ask them what their intent was.

I find that in general, they were trying to be funny or sarcastic, but the tone of what they typed did not match what they meant. However, if the comments could be perceived as cutting, or the jokes too cruel, it is important not to laugh these off.

Whether they are coming from your child, or directed to them, these typed words, usually visible to the larger community, can set off a chain reaction that will overwhelm even the strongest, most self-confident individual.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.