Cyberbullying - teaching the younger generation how to fight with it
The topic for today is related to internet bullying
What is internet bullying and how much do we know about this especially nowadays when anyone can face it and still most of us doesn’t know to what it is related to, and how we should avoid it either you are the bullied one or the who is bullying?
I want to talk today about this topic and how important is it to disseminate this topic around the younger generation as they are being the main target of this. On the 7th February with a great initiative promoted by the Europe Direct, and with the Help of Ivi, that made the right connections with the school. Was organized a massive seminar that was held for 14 groups of pupils from the middle school of Sapes.
Waking up at 7 o clock, we started our trip to Sapes, Ivi as a driver, Christos that is working in Europe Direct and me. It was a cold and rainy day and lots of pupils were waiting already for us. I was happy to help during the whole presentations but of course the hardest part was managed by Christos having to present for approximately 6 hours with only 5 minutes break between each meeting.
My main activity during the whole event was to take photos and to maintain the order in the class while Christos was presenting. Plus, other practical things. I was happy to see the interest the pupils were paying to the presentation, all the hands raised up. And that after many kids were approaching Christos for different questions.
Getting to the topic, Christos prepared a presentation using Prezi, which was interactive and more animated than a normal presentation. Each time Christos was talking for about 40-45 minutes. Including such topics as:
apps that are used for communication, publicly and privates one;
the classification of each category of apps used by the teens;
a graphical table that was showing the security qualifications of each up, using different criteria;
he was talking about mega data;
also explanations of how can influence your offline life from your online’s activities.
And many other topics.
It is important to organize such topics, of course, internet bullying is a common problem about which we don’t hear so often. And kids all together with their parents should be aware how to use internet in a safe way.
Unfortunately, many people don’t understand how serious is that problem, that sometimes internet bullying is not stopping just with some comments that you leave on someone’s page or status. But can lead to blackmailing, or even worse, to affect kid’s life in such a way that can lead to suicide. There is many to talk about and the side effects of not using internet safely, are sometimes huge.
Even if there are not any governmental projects regarding cyberbullying for our schools neither in Greece nor in Moldova and am sure that in many other countries too. Fortunately, internet is full with many other tools that will help you to protect yourself and the ones you care about. A very useful website that I totally recommend is: https://www.stopbullying.gov/cyberbullying/ , user friendly, that contains a lot of information as well as contacts that will help you to ask for help. I hope that after this meeting many kids will start to pay more attention on what they are posting, with whom they are talking and how to avoid or fight bullyings.