Don’t Let Your Teen Become A Cyber Bullying Statistic: Here Is What You Can Do

While schools, colleges, and other educational institutions have taken active steps to contain bullying on campus and have at times taken the strictest of measures, when it comes to bullying online, we still turn a blind eye. (Hindustan Times Study)According to an American study, 1 out of every 4 Indian teenagers have been cyber bullied at least once.

We in India commonly believe that cyber bullying is a phenomenon limited to the West. Maybe because we think our children are not online as much, or that they do not understand the true meaning of cyber bullying. While schools, colleges, and other educational institutions have taken active steps to contain bullying on campus and have at times taken the strictest of measures, when it comes to bullying online, we still turn a blind eye.

But here are the startling facts:

India comes in at number 3 for instances of cyber bullying in the world. Only behind Singapore and China. (Hindustan Times Study)
According to an American study, 1 out of every 4 Indian teenagers have been cyber bullied at least once.
Cyber bullied teenagers are 10 times more likely to commit suicide.

Trisha Prabhu, a 15 year old student of Neuqua Valley High School, Naperville, Illinois was shocked by these statistics too and decided to do something about it. Her product ReThink aims to stop cyber bullying at the source even before damage has been done. This software sends an alert to a teenager about to post an offensive post on social media and asks them to rethink what they just wrote. Research has shown that teens changed their mind 93% of the time and deleted what they had just written.

Here is an inspiring Ted Talk by the young teen.