24 April,2011 07:51 AM IST | | Dhamini Ratnam
As you battle your kids over the number of hours they can spend online in the summer break, spare a thought for the stranger on their friends' list and the cyber bully broadcasting awful things about them. Just because she's 8, doesn't mean it's not happening to her
Eleven year-old Ritika Jain (name changed) created heru00a0 account on Facebook after she found all her classmates making after-school plans on the networking site. Three months later, the child, whose father is a Pune-based businessman, had more friends on Facebook than she knew personally. Many, she hadn't met at all, but had accepted their 'friend request' since, in her school, the more friends you had on Facebook, the more popular you were.
Illustration/Jishu Dev Malakar
In July, six months after Jain opened her account, she went missing. She was abducted by her father's rival, who had befriended her on the site under an alias and lured her to meet him at a Mac Donald's for a burger. After Jain was rescued, her parents approached Sagar Rahurkar, a consultant at the Asian School of Cyber Laws, Pune, whose faculty had assisted the Indian government in drafting the Information Technology Act (2000).
A cyber camp for children aged eight to 10 in progress at the Asian
School of Cyber Law in Pune. Pic/Chetan Gandle
"They wanted me to teach their child to use Facebook," says the 23 year-old techno-legal consultant.
Jain's parents took the right step. The Norton Online Family Report 2010 studied the online behaviour of children in 14 countries and found that "most Indian kids do not follow common sense rules while online."
More than 200 children between the age of eight and 17 and 500 parents took part in the research across India. The report stated that 77 per cent children have received sexually explicit messages online, but 50 per cent of the parents didn't know about it. Only 24 per cent parents knew that an anonymous person had tried to befriend their child on a social networking site with malafide intent, while this had happened to over 55 per cent of the children.
Taking a cue from Jain's case, Rahurkar and the ASCL faculty began to hold cyber camps for children between eight to 18 years. While they have held three in Pune since January 2011, they will be holding their first camp in Mumbai in May.
The 10 hour-long camps spread over 10 days will coveru00a0 child pornography, cyber bullying, music and movie piracy, phishing, safe monetary transactions, and of course, correct social networking behaviour.
More cases, younger victims
While much has been said about older teenagers falling prey to or committing cyber crimes, experts note that the age of victims has been decreasing steadily. Vidya Reddy, who began Tulir Child Abuse Prevention and Healing Centre in Chennai in 2004 to provide psycho-social and legal assistance to victims, agrees.
Back then, she claims, she had never imagined that she would receive cases involving acts of abuse over the Internetu00a0 and cellphone. Now, she says, every case of child sexual abuse she receives has a cyber angle to it. The opposite is true, as well. Every case of cyber bullying that Reddy has come across through the workshops with school children, has a sexual angle to it.
What's more, the age of victims has decreased -- where two years ago, Reddy was holding workshops for Standard XI children, today she has hectic sessions with Standard VIII and IX kids, "all of whom are on Facebook, and have faced some form of cyber bullying".
"We get close to 400 cases a year, and the questions we ask them have changed. We now enquire whether they have been photographed or bullied on a social networking site. We also go through their profile pages. Contrary to what many think, ICT crimes are not an urban phenomenon," says Reddy.
The ASCL summer camps cater to two age groups -- those above 13 and those from eight to 12 years. These are conducted online, where participants will be made citizens of the Republic of Cyberia. Through a series of games, online lessons on cyber crime-related issues and quizzes, children will be given 'citizenship' in a social networking site.
"The idea is to provide a safe social networking environment where children will not meet anonymous strangers. Here we know who gets in and the moment they turn 18, they'll lose their citizenship," says Rahurkar.
Togetherville, a social networking website for children between age 6 and 10 created by Indian-origin entrepreneurs Mandeep Singh Dhillon and Rajveer Tut in May 2010, was created with the same purpose -- for parents to control whom their child networks with. The site, which was recently acquired by Disney, allowsu00a0 parentsu00a0 to send Togetherville friend requests through their own Facebook accounts. This way, they get to choose their child's friend list. Moreover, they also get regular updates of their child's activities on their own Facebook stream.
"The solution does not lie in dissuading our children from spending time online, since a large chunk of their adult lives, at work and at home, will be spent online. We need to teach them how to use the Internet to connect with the important people in their lives, safely and responsibly," Dhillon stated at the start of the venture.
Monitor, stay aware
However, not many parents realise the importance of monitoring their child's online activities, points out Reddy, and often react to situations too late. "Children and parents don't take online behaviour seriously, till things blow up in their face. Parents are blind to how fast things are changingu00a0 for our children. They'll raise an issue with their 15 year-old sitting with a friend in a park, but they don't realise that their child could be having a highly sexualised conversation with someone in his / her bedroom. What sort of blindness is that?" asks Reddy.
In some cases, it's better not to wait for the case to 'blow up in the face'. Tardeo-based child psychiatrist Pervin Dadachanji deals with at least two cases of cyber bullying a week.
"These cases are on the rise, and many children come to me seeking help for depression, where one of the underlying causes is cyber bullying," she says. Dadachanji recalls a case of a 12 year-old girl with severe depression, who was a victim of cyber bullying. "Someone had morphed her photo onto a naked body, hacked into her Facebook account and posted it on her wall. The girl was riled relentlessly."
In such cases, Dadachanji delves into how the children could control the situation.
"I let them come up with solutions to protect themselves in the future -- and they've said things like 'I'll shut my account', 'I'll operate Facebook with my mom around'".
3 cases of cyber crime involving children were registered at the Mumbai police cyber crime cell in 2009
0 cases of cyber crime involving children were registered at the Mumbai police cyber crime cell in 2010
0 cases of cyber crime registered where the child is a victim. Parents don't give cyber crimes importance
The handbook
Your guide to addressing cyber bullying
Advocate Debarati Halder, managing director, Centre for Cyber Victim Counselling, offers handy tips on how to recognise and deal with cyber bullying:
>> What is it? When children in the age group of 8-17 target or are targeted over the Internet through interactive devices such as computers, cellphones, PDAs, etc. It could range from a hateful message to morphed photographs and wall posts that everyone can see and comment on. It could be done against teachers and children.
>> Is it illegal? Sending annoying, defamatory messages publicly could be tagged 'illegal'. Section 66A of the Information Technology Act 2000 (amended in 2008) states that any information, message and mail which is grossly offensive or has a menacing character; which, the sender of the original message knows to be false and / oru00a0 annoying, which can cause danger, insult, hatred, criminal intimidation, enmity and ill-will to the other is restricted as 'prohibited' and the wrong-doer could be punished with imprisonment for three years and with fine.
>> How to deal with it? Don't reply. Take a print out and report the matter to your parents or school. Talk to your parents. Do not let the school take this lightly. If the bullying continues, contact the cyber crime cell of your city.
