Skip navigation

Menu:

Advice

Keeping in touch with friends or family on the internet through email or chatting is really popular especially among young people. But unfortunately cyberbullying (bullying by mobile phone or the internet) is on the increase amongst young people today. In fact as many as 33% of children who go on the internet in the UK say they have experienced bullying, or sexual or nasty comments, in some form or other.

Of course it’s every parent’s nightmare that their child gets in contact with a stranger who could then try to lure them to meet up, and sadly we do know that this type of activity does go on. However, it is relatively rare, and the good news is that there are simple things that you can do to keep your children safer.

Here are some things that you can do straight away. Start by talking to your children, and make sure they can talk to you. It’s important that, in the same way that you check up where your child is going when they leave the house, you also need to know where they are going, and who they are talking to, on the internet. If they are using Instant Messenger, ask them who their “buddies” are on their contacts list and whether they know them in the real world. If they have a page on a site like MySpace or Bebo ask them about their friends.

It’s just as important to let your children know that they can talk to you about anything which makes them feel uncomfortable on the internet or mobile phone, and that you will try to support them and not overreact. One of the biggest risks for children and young people is that they give out too much information to the wrong people.

We don’t just mean telephone numbers and addresses, we also mean the name of their school, their intimate thoughts and feelings and, increasingly, pictures of themselves. Once information has been sent out in an email, by mobile phone or posted onto a website, it can be easily copied or forwarded to others and you don’t know where it will end up or who will get it.

It’s really important that as a family you have clear rules about what information it is OK to give out. Take a look at our family agreement section where you can design and print out your own set of rules. One of the most important rules of course, is that children should not meet up unsupervised with people that they have only met on the internet, and that they should tell you straight away if someone wants to meet up with them.