Recently, when a 14-year-old girl refused to attend school after reading a mail circulated by her classmates (which made fun of her for being overweight), the incident once again highlighted the increasing cases of cyber bullying among schoolchildren. Many might have observed that cyberspace has been used by school students to bully their classmates, vent frustration, angst, and also by the bully as a tool to take revenge. In today’s times when the Internet is an important part of everybody’s life, the incident focused on the immediate need to teach children about the ethical use of computers.
“This is a serious issue as today’s students are not even aware of basic cyber ethics. I have many examples where children take pride in hacking someone’s email account. It’s a dangerous situation when unethical means interest children and they start looking at these things as a challenge. Having said that I would like to add that we cannot solely blame children,” opines Reena Saihgal, in-house counsellor for Bal Bharti Public School.
Social networking sites, which have been hailed as the best tool to keep in touch with friends and peers, too have been increasingly used by children to vent their frustration, anger and by bullies to take revenge. Experts say by doing so, children are becoming more aggressive in their behaviour.
“At times children cannot express or say things they want in real life and hence resort to the Internet to vent their frustration and anger. I have observed, that many students suffer from low self-esteem in real life, but their personality changes once they are in the cyber world. They tend to become nasty,” opines psychiatrist Bristi Barkakoty of PSRI.
However, both parents and schools agree that it’s a collective responsibility of parents as well as teachers to educate children about the ethics of the cyber world and kids should be made aware that any mischief can be tracked. “I think just like the government promotes vaccination, parents too should be vaccinated with proper parenting skills,” adds Saihgal.
“Students should be made aware that there are alternative ways of handling conflicts. Campaigns, presentations, street plays and lectures by visiting experts are some of the ways one can spread awareness about this issue,” avers Manas Guha, an ex-govt. school teacher.