Are you facing hate messages or are your photos being used by classmates to make you look and feel bad? Then you are facing Cyber Bullying and we are here to help you take to deal with it the right way with our top 11 tips for facing cyberbullying. These are the Tips for preventing Cyberbullying:
Tips for preventing Cyberbullying: Teach Yourself
Do your research, and find out what is Cyberbullying, and why it happens? How does it happen? What do your country’s laws state about it? Ask your friends and see if they are facing something similar.
Tips for preventing Cyberbullying: Protect your online information
Don’t share your passwords or secret account information with friends or classmates. If you believe someone else has your information, change it now! this is key for bully prevention.
Tips for preventing Cyberbullying: Never open messages from anonymous senders
Even on Facebook, for the ultimate bully prevention, keep your messaging option private so that strangers don’t contact you. Don’t open spam emails or emails from people you don’t know. Delete messages that seem fishy without reading them because they might contain viruses that expose everything on your device to other people. Don’t open links from someone you don’t know regardless of how attractive the title is.
Tips for preventing Cyberbullying: Always LOG OUT
If you are using a shared computer or a friend’s phone or tablet to check any of your accounts, always log out before stepping away from the device. Don’t use the “keep me signed in” option because you never know when you can forget to log out and that can jeopardize your account information.
Tips for preventing Cyberbullying: Don’t take potentially damaging photos of yourself
We know it is fun if you take goofy or semi-exposed photos of yourself but can you imagine what might happen if someone shares these photos for the world to see? What if you lose your phone or your camera? It is simply not worth the risk. If taking photos, keep it “PG”. Bullying Prevention is nothing without this.
Tips for preventing Cyberbullying: Stop for a moment before you POST
Don’t just post things about yourself online that someone else might use against you. don’t start fake stories about yourself to gain “LIKES”. The truth is, people, judge you based on what you say about yourself online because they, simply, don’t know any other way to know you. We are hearing that big name colleges and companies do an online search of an applicant, that goofy picture you posted doesn’t seem like a good idea now, does it?
Tips for preventing Cyberbullying: Educate your friends and stand up for them
If you are not a victim of cyberbullying but fear a friend is doing something that may affect his/her life and reputation online or may put them in danger. Talk to them, and show them videos and stories of how serious cyberbullying is.
Tips for preventing Cyberbullying: Raise awareness
Start a movement, create a club, build a campaign, or host an event to bring awareness to Cyberbullying. While you may understand what it is, it’s not until others are aware of it too that we can truly prevent it from occurring.
Tips for preventing Cyberbullying: Setup privacy controls
Restrict access of your online profile to trusted friends only. Most social networking sites like Facebook and Google + offer you the ability to share certain information with friends only, but these settings must be configured in order to ensure maximum protection.
Tips for preventing Cyberbullying: “Google” yourself
Regularly search your name in every major search engine (e.g., Google, Bing, Yahoo). If any personal information or photo comes up which may be used by cyberbullies to target you, take action to have it removed before it becomes a problem.
And Finally: Don’t be a Cyberbully yourself
Treat others how you would want to be treated. By being awful to others online, you are reinforcing the idea that the behaviour is acceptable.