How India aims to guard teens from cyber bullying?

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs has come out with a booklet titled “A Handbook for Students on Cyber Safety” to guard teen against becoming victims of cybercrime.

Handbook on cyber safety for students:

• The booklet tries to address the issue of increasing use of smartphones, gadgets, online gaming, social media, and fake news.
• The booklet also deals with the problems of cyberbullying, cyber grooming and email fraud.
• The booklet cautions the teens. It highlights that Fake news and hoax messages spread like wildfire on social media (such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat). Fake news may create law and order problem and may end up causing loss of life in a few cases. The booklet advice to be cautious before forwarding or sharing any message on social media or messaging app and also ask to check it on other sources to confirm its authenticity.
• The Home Ministry is also aiming to introduce the cybercrime handbook in schools as a component of the school curriculum.
• The booklet identifies Cyber grooming as one of the major cyber threats faced by children and teenagers. Cyber grooming is a practice where someone builds an emotional bond with children through social media or messaging platforms with an objective of gaining their trust for sexually abusing and exploiting them.
• The booklet also cautions student about social engineering. Social engineering is a technique used by cybercriminals to gain your confidence to get information from you. Depending upon what you like most, a cybercriminal may try to interact with you to mine for information.
• The booklet also advises teenagers against accepting friend requests from unknown people on social media.

The increasing exposure of social media among children has become a matter of concern for parents as well as the government.  The handbook on cybersecurity will come handy in educating the child about risks on social media as well as methods commonly used by cybercriminals to entrap their victims.