Methods for Parents to Deal with Facebook Bullying

Bullying is a repetitive act of hostility towards another person, often resulting from the imbalance of either physical or social power. Bullying often resulting in distress and provocation of the affected party. It is often viewed as aggressive intimidation and can also be termed as harassment to the affected party. Bullying can be of various kinds. In this age of social media, with Facebook being the highest in use among kids, Facebook bullying has become a worrisome trend that needs immediate fixing and curbing.

Therefore, today we shall be discussing the various aspects of Facebook cyberbullying and how to curb it.

What is Facebook Bullying?

Long before, bullying had been thought to be an act that was somewhat restricted to physical and verbal harassment alone. However, as said above, with the advent of technology came the term cyberbullying. You may be wondering what is cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is common among kids, youth, and teens who use digital means to harass another user with the intent to harm or tarnish the victim's image.

Facebook is one of the largest social media platforms with easy access via the Internet today on mobile. Yet, it is the place where Facebook cyberbullying takes place. Facebook bullying may have different forms:

• Facebook bullying amongst teens includes spreading and posting rumors that can mar the reputation of the victim.
• Exposing of the victims' personal and secretive information, sending and replying to posts with threats of physical bullying or even blackmails.
• It can also include sexual remarks, all comments that are tailored to reducing the victim's self-esteem or simply imbibe fear and frustration that could result in depression of the victim.

How to deal with Facebook bullying via the tools offered by Facebook?

As a multi-million dollar company, Facebook is also concerned about the privacy and well-being of its users. Thus they have introduced new features and tools to curb Facebook bullying. Users can use these tools to prevent or stop a repetitive case of Facebook cyberbullying, prevent the loss of self-esteem in victims and ultimately reduce the rate of suicidal ideation caused by such bullying.

Here are some of the ways you can use the Facebook tools and safeguard yourself:

1. Report Posts or Account

Reporting post on Facebook is the longest available tool to prevent Facebook bullying. It alerts the Facebook team about a post that might be offensive or improper and enables them to look into the post in detail. To report a post that contains Facebook cyberbullying content, simply click on the flag or report button next to the post.

2. Hide or Delete Group Comments

This is a new feature on Facebook that gives the user of the post the authority to hide or delete the comments on a particular post. When this is done, no comments would be seen under that post, making it impossible for any cyberbully to write hateful or frightening comments on a post. This helps curb Facebook cyberbullying and ensures that users feel safe to post on their timelines.

3. Report Bullying on Someone's Behalf

Knowing fully well that the victims of bullying usually find it difficult to speak out against their bullies, Facebook made it possible for concerned friends and family members to report an account involved in Facebook bullying. The account will then be looked into, and the case of bullying will be fixed based on an anonymous report.

The Facebook team will analyze, and if the account has violated social media policies, the posts will be taken down, or the account will be suspended. Things and posts such as hateful speeches, sexually explicit content, or violently improper comments would be immediately removed.

Facebook is also looking to implement tools and added features for users to search for and delete words that they consider offensive in the comments sections of any post they have made.

4. Block Bullies:

Facebook lets you block users that they consider being Facebook bullies or any account engaging in continuous harassment. Once a victim of Facebook bullying blocks a user, the bully will be unable to see posts, make comments, or message the bullied party, hereby taking away the possibility of writing hateful or offensive comments.

5. Unfriend Bullies:

Facebook takes into consideration the concept of offer and acceptance. Before one user can be friends with another on Facebook, a friend request must be sent and then accepted by the second party. Facebook also includes a privacy setting that makes it possible for “only friends” to view your posts and comments on them. If a user is going through Facebook cyberbullying, that user can decide to unfriend the guilty party. This will automatically screen out the bully from having access to any post made on the victim's account.

Deal with Facebook bullying via FamiSafe

One of the best and useful tools or programs available today to help prevent cyberbullying, including Facebook bullying, is FamiSafe. This program is an ultimate safety program created to help parents keep their children safe from all forms of digital dangers.

Explicit Content Detection is a useful feature for parents to protect their children from Facebook bullying. These features would monitor the Facebook message that kids receive on Facebook for sensitive words. To ensure the detection's accuracy, FamiSafe has been expanding its suspicious word base by allowing parents to add new words to the base. If any Facebook messages that contain words like bi**h, you ugly, f**k you, parents would receive a notification on their end.

Moreover, FamiSafe does not only support Facebook. It also supports monitoring messages, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram, Kik, YouTube. The feature is also easy to use. Parents can simply activate the category of suspicious SMS words that they wish to get alert about. You can also decide to add their own customized list of words that they want the FamiSafe program to alert them about using the add button. If you want to provide all-around protection for your kids, then you should not miss FamiSafe.

FamiSafe added a comprehensive list of words all grouped under different categories of suspicious messages.

Except for the Explicit Content Detection feature, other features of FamiSafe are also helpful for keeping our children safe both online and in real-life.

• Location tracking: If you are always worrying about where your kids are, then FamiSafe's Real-time location is here to solve your concern. You can check your kid's live location anywhere and anytime on your own phones. You can check your kid's location history or use the Geofences feature to set up an area to receive notifications when your kids enter or leave.
• Web Filter & Safe Search: Allowing kids to surf online is a good way to learn new things. Yet, it is also possible that they may come across websites that are not proper for them. FamiSafe's Web Filter and Safe Search feature are here to help you. Safe Search will make sure that search results that contain inappropriate information do not show up, while the Web Filter will automatically block websites that are not proper for kids.
• Activity Report: Get to know what your kids are doing on their phones in report formats to better understand your kids' behavior.

What's noteworthy is that FamiSafe supports multiple devices. You can use FamiSafe to monitor kid's Android, iOS, Fire OS, Mac, and Windows with one account at one time.

Is FamiSafe difficult to use?

Not at all. The install and setup are quite easy for FamiSafe. As an app to monitor kid's device activity, you would need to install FamiSafe on your devices and your kid's devices first. Then all you need to do is follow the onscreen instruction to grant access to FamiSafe, and off you go.