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Want to protect your child from the Blue Whale Challenge? Read this!

Last updated on: September 04, 2017 17:54 IST

With the ever evolving social media, the threat of child abuse often manifests itself in new avatars like the Blue Whale Challenge and Sarahah.

cyber bullying

Does your child spend more time on smartphones?

Is your child very active on social media?

Do you feel that they spend more time online than offline, then it time for you to be on alert?

India and cyber bullying

The risk for Indian kids being cyber bullied has increased over the years.

According to available data, India ranks much higher when it comes to cyber bullying, in comparison to other Asian countries.

The rise can be felt with the number of cases we get these days.

For instance, a Class V student approached us for a fake Facebook profile created to defame him. Similarly, a Class VIII girl's Facebook account was hacked for personal vendetta.

Studies have highlighted that 53 per cent of the Indian kids in the age group of eight to 17 have been subjected to cyber bullying at least once.

Rough calculations say that 13 crore children in the same group will get an access to Internet data by the end of year 2017.

Thus, this makes Indian children highly vulnerable to cyber bullying. Needless to say, cyber bullying will have an sociological and psychological impact on the young minds.

ABC of cyber bullying

Cyber bullying can be classified into -- direct attacks, and bullying by proxy.

Direct cyber attacks are those in which the attacker targets the victim via:

Online messaging apps and websites can be exploited to use video camera of the computer, laptop or mobile.

Trojans (malicious software), which can hack computer system and can be accessed by the hacker remotely, can even disable the computer system's camera's LED, which notifies the user that your camera is on.

It often leads to exploitation of kids -- especially girls -- by recording their activities.

New threats and challenges

With ever evolving social media, the threat of child abuse often manifests itself in new avatars like the Blue Whale Challenge and Sarahah.

The Blue Whale Challenge is an Internet game, which challenges the player to complete 50 tasks, which often compel the child to commit suicide.

Sarahah is another online application that allows people to post anonymous comments, which often are rude, mean and embarrassing.

Sarahah's anonymity makes it a potential threat as it can be used to both blackmail children and even send offensive messages, seeking sexual favours.

Such online applications often expose the kids to a greater risk of being abused or bullied online or even are forced to commit suicide.

Why are kids abused or targeted?

While most of us would want to believe that our kids are safe and no one would particularly target kids, let's be honest and face the fact that complete online safety for kids is not possible.

There is no particular answer to the question of why kids?

But data suggests that children often have to bear the burden of child abuse. This is primarily because offenders find it easy to exploit them.

Online abuse mentally disturbs the child, often causing academic loss.

Fear of restrictions being imposed on mobile and internet usage often makes the kids not share such incidents with parents.

Often, kids have directly approached us, as they didn’t want to share such cases with parents, and we often counsel them.

Preventing child abuse

Parents play can play a vital role in curtailing child abuse, by being more alert and following a few guidelines:

Parental guidelines to avert online child abuse:

Remember, online abuse is scary, as the child being abused often thinks that there is no way out as the offender can offend anytime, anywhere, even when the child is home.

Being your child's confidante is the only way to protect them from online perverts.

Lead pic: Courtesy Andreasfuchs8732/Pixabay.com

Mukesh Choudhary