9 Out of 10 Cyber Bullied Kids Don’t Tell Their Parents About Being Harassed

New York, NY, April 19, 2016 --(PR.com)-- With the increasing availability of smartphones and other mobile devices, teens and adolescents have almost unlimited access to the internet. Studies show that about 80% of kids use at least one social media platform to connect with their peers and spend at least nine hours every day consuming online media.

While this means a lot of great things – ready access to information, open communication to family and friends – the internet also poses a lot of dangers to its users, especially kids.

According to statistics posted by a non-profit organization, DoSomething.Org, almost 43% of minors have experienced cyberbullying and only 1 out of 10 of them will tell a parent or a trusted adult about it. That means 90% of bullied teens will go through the experience alone. Parents might not even be able to tell there’s something wrong with their kids since online harassment doesn’t leave physical clues.

In this situation, knowledge is key. It’s not enough for parents to “friend” their kid on Facebook or Follow their tweets, and regularly check for updates. A lot of times, the harassment doesn’t even happen in the bullied kid’s online space. It happens on another person’s account or a random website or a chat room.

While parents have some control when it comes to monitoring their kid’s online activity, there seems to be very little they can do to track what other kids post.

Until now.

Services like RepWarn.Com exist to be able to track and monitor social media and other online posts in real time. Parents can use the software to keep an eye on mentions of the names of their kid, their kid’s school, and other key personnel and places that they deem relevant to their child’s well-being. Users just need to set up the names and keywords on the tool and they’ll immediately get a notification as soon as the keywords they’re tracking is mentioned anywhere online.

If anyone in the vast World Wide Web uses a kid’s name in a tweet or an Instagram post or a random forum, the parents will get pinged and can at once see whether that mention is significant and if they should take action. It works both as a safeguard against online bullies and an auditor to a teen’s online activities.

Children are a parent’s most cherished gift and keeping them safe both off and online is an important duty. The personal license version of RepWarn.Com, a product by Universal Media Online, aims to make it easier and more effective for parents and guardians to ensure that no online harassment affects their kids’ real life happiness and safety.