5 Ways to Teach Your Kids About Online Safety and Bullying

Adulting is one thing. But parenting is a whole other game! As a parent, so many responsibilities fall on your shoulders, and modern life keeps making it more and more complex.

Teaching your kids about online safety and cyberbullying is more important now than ever before especially considering the reliance we place on the internet in managing our daily lives (just watch to see what these kids had to say about it!).

We spend so much of our day online—for work and for fun. Our kids no doubt will spend just as much (if not more time) in the digital world and learning how to safely navigate it is a top lesson they need to learn.

So, let’s take a closer look at online safety and bullying and some easy ways to teach your kids about it!

What Does Cyberbullying Look Like?

Cyberbullying can look different for each age group and the effects of cyberbullying will depend on the person too. But some examples of cyberbullying include:

• Sharing or posting a private or embarrassing video without consent
• Hacking social accounts and impersonating the individual
• Deliberately refusing to call someone by their preferred pronouns to antagonize or humiliate them
• Making fun of, taunting or teasing someone repeatedly online (even after being asked to stop)
• Threatening someone in text, video or while gaming
• Spreading rumors or gossip or saying mean comments via social media, text message or email

These are just a handful of tactics a bully may use. Exactly what they say or post will depend a lot of the child they are targeting. If the bully knows what will gain an emotional reaction from the victim, or knows their hot buttons, the bully will keep pushing the victim online (and sometimes in-person too).

Common themes bullies make fun of are someone’s appearance, their mannerisms, race, religion, status and sexual identity.

How Might Cyberbullying Impact My Kids?

Everyone’s response to online bullying will be unique. And the impact may look different depending on your child’s age group. The impacts can range from a child quickly jumping off the phone to withdrawing from friends and family, there are many ways cyberbullying can impact a kid.

Cyberbullying could impact your child’s mental health common symptoms include:

• Increased feelings of stress, depression or anxiousness
• Trouble concentrating or focusing on school
• Loss of appetite or sleep
• Low energy levels
• Moodiness
• Thoughts of self-harm or suicide
• Decreased sense of self-worth and decreased self-confidence

What Can I Do to Help Prevent Online Bullying? 

Each age group will have a different relationship with the online world. Below are ways your child may be using the internet and resources to help you make it a safer place for them.

Infancy and Early Childhood (Birth to 18 months)

Even though your baby isn’t on the internet this young, you are.

Many parents share pics and videos of their kids, aka “sharenting.” It’s a great way to keep distant friends and relatives in the loop on your kid. But before your post, remember that those images will be available online. Forever.

A research-savvy future bully could easily access old baby photos or videos and turn them into mean memes or do some other photoshop meanness to taunt your child for years to come.

And your baby may not grow up to appreciate their bathtub photos or birthday cake smash being readily available to the world. Like, how embarrassing!

Imagine your most embarrassing childhood photo being online? You know, the one with you sitting on the toilet? You probably wouldn’t have liked that as a teen and chances are your kid won’t appreciate it much either.

On a more serious note, the internet can be a dark, evil place. Public profiles leave you (and maybe your kids) at risk to being found by a predator and worse.

Once you go public with (or even email or text) images or information about yourself or your children, you don’t know who will see it, screenshot it, share it or do whatever with it. You really just never know, so think twice about what you share and with whom.

Early Childhood (18 months to 3 years)

Many children will start interacting with screens in this age group. While your child is not streaming, chatting or posting just yet, there are a lot of learning apps and child-friendly websites that could be getting their attention.

There’s a lot of great stuff that could be happening at this early age too between you and baby:

• Bonding together through the teaching and learning process
• Exploring technology together
• Fine motor skill development
• Learning colors, numbers, sounds, letters and other age-appropriate topics
• Building confidence using tech

It’s a good idea to activate parental controls and/or passcodes (including on your TV!) at this age group. Kids are curious and will keep clicking until they are stopped or get bored.

Middle Childhood (3 to 5 years)

Depending on your child’s development, you might start letting your kid use the internet unsupervised from time to time. A lot of children will start watching videos online around this age. Pay attention to those toy reveals and other videos they love.

With remote learning, they may even spend a couple hours a day “at school” online. Bullying can easily begin here when a classmate says something mean or careless. Your child may even test the bounds too and say something inappropriate.

How you react to these situations will lay the foundation for how they behave and interact with others in the digital and real worlds.

When your child is interacting with others via video, it’s important to reinforce and model good social manners for the digital world.

• What does raising your hand look like online?
• What’s the best way to tell your teacher you need help?
• What are the rules when you’re in class?

Children here may be too young to learn directly about cyberbullying and online safety but they can start learning about kindness. Check out some popular baby and toddler books on kindness or this YouTube read along story on bullying.

Late Childhood (5 to 10 years)

Here is when cyberbullying may begin—either your child being bullied or even being the bully themselves.

Kids in this age group are seeking more independence and start putting more emphasis on forming friendships. Peer pressure becomes a thing for them.

While you may trust them searching solo on a child-safe browser like KidRex or Kidtopia, and maybe you even let them open a social account, parents should still be around when the child is online.

Directly teaching your kids about online safety and cyberbullying should begin around this age. Here are some great resources to teach your kids with:

• For younger children, Clicker Cat is a fun book about internet habits.
• How to be kind online from PBS gives a great cartoon example
• Handling rude chat comments while gaming from PBS is another cartoon
• Meet Captain Compassion, who helps teach children and adults alike how to spot and prevent bullying
• And many, many more resources you can find online!

Whether it’s calling someone “stupid” on the playground or in a YouTube comment, it’s equally painful. But, just like with us adults, it’s easy to depersonalize when typing on a screen.

Inclusive books and movies geared towards kids will help them understand how different everyone truly is—and that it’s a great thing! Here are some great examples:

• Racial diversity: Here’s a great list to get started with from Upparent or another list of kid-friendly movies on diversity from the Huffpost.
• Ableness: Check out this teacher’s list of 60 books that explore ableness and disabilities. Reading levels vary quite a bit here.
• Gender stereotypes: Mashable put together a rock-star list of gender equality resources for kids and here’s another awesome list of 11 books breaking down stereotypes.
• Neurodiversity: Here are some great picture books about Autism and you can check out Pixar’s short Loop, starring their first non-verbal character (available on Disney+) or even Inside Out (also on Disney+) to start learning about feelings and how the brain works.

Pre-Teen (10-12 years)

If your child isn’t online now for purely social reasons, then they will be soon. Whether it’s live streaming, gaming or having their own social profiles, pre-teens need to have a solid understanding of what bullying is and feel safe enough to report any that they see or experience themselves.

• NetSmartzKids is an informative and entertaining web series, games and activities website that explores everything from cyberbullying to online blackmail for preteens and teens. Follow characters as they learn how to be smarter, kinder and safer online.
• Having your tween or teen listen to their peers may be more powerful than hearing it from you. Teens share their thoughts on oversharing and digital footprint in this reel.

Adolescence (13-20 years)

If it hasn’t happened sooner, your teen is probably chatting online at this point. Or snapping. Or posting.

Parents can talk to their teen about cancel culture. If your teen is “cancelled” or “cancels” someone else, there could be real mental and emotional consequences. Here’s an article for teens that overviews the complexities of cancel culture (because sometimes this really is masked bullying).

This is also an important time in their life as they explore their individuality, sexuality and personal values. The online world can be cruel and your teen may feel forced to send nudes, videos or to sext. When you discuss sex and sexuality with your teen, make sure you include what sexuality means for the online world. These photos can easily turn into blackmail bait, destroy a teen’s reputation and make them vulnerable to bullies.

Stopbullying.gov has a host of articles and tips for teens, if they are the victim of bullies. There’s also a great guide for adults too.

5 Ways To Teach Your Kids

Along with all the wonderful resources above, here are five fundamentals to follow when handling this topic with your child (at any age).

1. Make Rules That Work. Have a conversation with your child and agree to age-appropriate rules. Think about:

• the amount of time your child can spend online a day
• the time of day they can be online
• where in the house the online activity is allowed (communal vs. private spaces)
• what your child can and cannot do online
• any monitoring tools or apps you may install to see their digital activity
• how and when to tell you about dangerous, aggressive or bullying behavior they see or experience

2. Cultivate Empathy Early. Listen to everything your child tells you. This will build trust in your relationship, validate their thoughts and help them feel comfortable opening up to you. Showing them what empathy truly is will help them learn what it is and be able to be empathetic as they grow up. Empathy and embracing people as the unique people they are helps establish an open worldview and mitigate bullying remarks and thoughts.

3. Encourage Your Children. There’s a difference between tattling (trying to get someone in trouble) and reporting (trying to get someone help). Helping your child understand that different is key. Once they see that reporting is good, then it’s important that you encourage them to do so. Whether it’s reporting them to the website where the bullying happened or to you or to an adult you and your child both trust, it needs to be reported. The see something, say something approach will help keep everyone safe.

4. Don’t Freak Out! If your child reports something to you or another parent says your child is bullying theirs, remain calm. Yes, it’s a big deal. Yes, that is your baby and you want to protect them. But if your child sees you panic, they may think it’s their fault (especially if they are still very young) or they may believe they are an intrinsically bad person or that you hate them.

5. Be a Role Model. Model good online behavior and etiquette for your children. When they see healthy ways of engaging online, how to establish boundaries and privacy while online and blocking when necessary, they will pick up those habits too. Also turn off your phone once in a while. It’ll teach them how to disconnect and stay connected to the people around them.

How Blink by Chubb Can Help

Parenting is becoming ever more complex as technology changes our lives. Blink offers protection and insurance for our digital world.  Our cyber protection can cover you and your kid from identity theft, cyberbullying and more. Check it out at www.blinkinsured.com.