Strength TogetHER 16 - Session 6

January 8, 2022

Unless and until our society recognizes cyberbullying for what it is, the suffering of thousands of silent victims will continue. - Anna Maria Chavez

With the increase in the use of the internet and social media platforms, there has always been a fear of online abuse. With this in mind, we conducted a session at Mahendra Bhawan School on the topic of, “Online Abuse” moderated by Rusha Adhikari. 

Our moderator Rusha Adhikari started the session with her introduction. She is a development professional who has experience working with different national and international organizations in the areas of child rights, child protection, quality education, and access to justice. 

All the participants introduced themselves mentioning their favorite social media platforms. Youtube, Snapchat, Instagram, and messenger were the most mentioned ones. They also listed and discussed all the social media platforms they were aware of, and what they use the specific ones for. The main purposes of use discussed were to research, make videos, take pictures, watch movies, attend online classes, make new friends, and connect with close ones. 

Our moderator gradually started introducing topics about abuse, and discussed how the participants understand it and the types of abuse. Any activity against one’s will is abuse. It can be done by misusing relationships, power, and trust. We also discussed contact abuse: physical abuse against one’s will and noncontact abuse: abuse without touch, in distance abuse. 

Our moderator then handed out cards with terminologies related to online bullying and asked participants to discuss what it meant. The discussed terminologies were:

Hate Speech: Hate Speech is abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice against a particular group of people rather than to individuals.

Doxing/ Doxxiing: Doxing is when someone publishes personal information on the internet without consent to harass them.

Online Impersonation: It refers to the act of creating an online presence in someone else’s name/ making fake accounts. 

Online sexual harassment: Sending or posting sexual videos, links, texts without one’s consent especially to women. 

Sextortion: Sextortion is a serious crime that occurs when someone threatens to distribute your private and sensitive material if you don't provide them images of a sexual nature, sexual favors, or money.

Trafficking: The use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act. It is possible online as people use social media to influence and persuade victims.  

Revenge Porn: It is publicly sharing the sexual content of the partner without his/her consent for revenge. 

Cyberbullying: It is the bullying that takes place over digital devices like phones, computers, tablets, etc. Nowadays 90% of children suffer from cyberbullying.  

All these topics were discussed with recent real-life examples. Some of the topics were familiar to the participants whereas some weren’t. Our moderator also shared that as per her research in Nepal 13% of school-going children in Nepal were abused online and 58% don’t know about legal actions to take against online bullying. The participants also gave examples of some influences being bullied online. 

While talking about these terminologies, two participants shared that they had made fake accounts. One participant shared that it was to speak with her own friend who had blocked her main account after a fight. The other participant that hers was for the same reason as well.

Our moderator also shared that most physical abuse and trafficking takes place after online grooming is done. We also saw a video of a person chatting/talking to a random stranger online which led her to get kidnapped.

Recognizing the symptoms of online abuse is important to help the abused ones. Our participants shared anxiety, panic attacks, distancing from closed ones, and constantly using phones are some symptoms to look for. 

We concluded the session with an activity to check the strength of passwords. The major takeaways from the session were:

Not to share passwords with anyone

Always keep account private

Follow privacy settings 

In case of abuse, keep the screenshots as evidence 

And, always seek help from elders whom we absolutely trust.