According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), an estimated 847,000 children experienced bullying online in the last year. Anti-bullying Week, taking place between November 11 and 15, aims to raise awareness of bullying in both physical and digital spaces, and to highlight ways of preventing it. In this article, SIM-only mobile provider spusu shares practical steps parents can take to help reduce the impact of cyberbullying on their children.
Cyberbullying can take many forms, such as receiving hurtful messages, exclusion from online games and groups and impersonating someone online. A major concern with cyberbullying is its persistent nature — it can follow young people anywhere as long as they have access to their devices.
According to Ofcom, 25 per cent of five-to seven-year-olds have a smartphone. Ofcom has also reported that nine in ten children own a mobile phone by the time they reach eleven years old, while 75 per cent of social media users aged between eight and 17 have a profile on at least one social media platform.
Keeping them safe on social media
While there are ways to limit the impact of cyberbullying, such as restricting your child’s screentime, encouraging open discussion about online experiences and teaching them about what cyberbullying can look like, there are features specific to each social platform parents can enable for better supervision.
First, it’s worth noting that Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube are the most popular platforms among young people today, with a report from parental controls company Qustodio finding that British children spend 127 minutes a day on TikTok — more than any other country.
Instagram and TikTok both offer privacy settings to limit who can see and interact with a child’s profile, such as making the account private, and restricting who can comment on posts and who can send messages. Taking it one step further, TikTok’s “Family Pairing” allows parents to connect their TikTok account with their child’s, without directly controlling the account. Using the function allows parents to set screen time limits, restrict direct messages and enable a restricted mode to limit the appearance of mature content.
For Snapchat, the Friend List Visibility feature lets parents view who their child is connected with on the app, helping to ensure that they are interacting with age-appropriate people. And for YouTube, it’s worth considering the YouTube Kids App, which is designed for children under 13 and only allows them to view age-appropriate content. For older children, there is also option for Supervised YouTube Accounts. This means parents can set up an account that offers three tiers of content restriction: “Explore”, featuring more general YouTube content, “Explore More”, for pre-teens and younger teens, and “Most of YouTube”, which includes almost all videos except age-restricted content.
The realm of online gaming
Most children who spend time online play video games. You’ve likely heard of Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft, but as a parent, it’s unlikely that you know them as well as your children do. Luckily, there are steps you can take to add some clarity to your child’s gaming experience.
Like you would with restricting internet access, you can set up parental controls and privacy settings on the games your child plays. Xbox and PlayStation consoles have comprehensive parental controls that allow you to limit communication, restrict purchases and set content restrictions by age. These settings can help you control who can message or talk to your child.
Fortnite enables parental controls to limit voice chat, restrict who can send friend requests and turn off mature language filters. For Roblox, consider enabling the “account restrictions” feature, which limits chat capabilities and narrows down game access to only those suitable for younger users.
Other ways children can be exposed to cyberbullying while gaming is directly through voice chat, common with multiplayer games, which allows users to speak verbally to each other. Many games have built-in voice chat features that can be restricted to prevent exposure to strangers. On Fortnite or Minecraft, you can disable voice chat entirely or configure it so they only hear friends, while you can disable both voice and text chat for younger users to avoid unwanted communication on Roblox.
Anti-bullying Week is a stark reminder of the harm that children can be exposed to in the digital world. And as the number of children with access to a device increases, it will only be more important to safeguard their exposure to social media and online gaming. By understanding the platforms that children use, and the different parental features each one offers, parents won’t be in the dark about the digital lives of their children.
spusu offers a range of cost-effective SIM-only plans on the market, making them ideal for first time phones for young people. Visit spusu.co.uk to learn more.
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