On the occasion of the International Day against School Violence and Bullying on November 4, Ifop and Kaspersky France are publishing a worrying study on the inability of parents to cope with cyberbullying.
If the online harassment is a subject less and less taboo and around which the word is free, the recent Kaspersky France-Ifop study published on November 4 reveals that parents of potentially exposed children feel particularly helpless in the face of the phenomenon of cyberbullying. Although the spotlight has been put on this subject in recent years, 25% of them estimate lack of information faced with this phenomenon: they do not feel armed and sometimes do not know how to react to stop the cyber harassment.
On a sample of 960 parents of children in elementary school or college, 82% admit to being worried about the way their child uses the internet. However, the family unit has not resigned in the face of this problem: 80% of parents say they have already made their children aware of the dangers of the Internet.
Overexposure at the root of cyberstalking
The development of social networks and their accessibility to the young is not without consequences for their mental health. Before their 13 years, 87% of pre-teens are equipped with a smartphone and connected. The consequence ? Between 53% and 76% of children would thus be registered on at least one social network.
According to the Ifop survey, this digital overexposure and the risk of virality of the exchanges predisposes to the experience of cyberstalking. Cyberbullying that is not generally limited to the digital microcosm, and generally goes hand in hand with a school harassment which is installed between the walls of the establishment. A parliamentary report published in October 2020 revealed that 5 to 6% of students in France are victims.
Strengthen parental controls
If the government renews its awareness campaign “No to harassment“, the deputy Bruno Studer would like to strengthen parental controls on connected devices. He thus deposited a bill on November 3 for’ “encourage the use of parental controls on certain equipment and services sold in France and allowing access to the Internet”.
To justify this need, the deputy summoned the conclusions of an Ifop poll conducted by the CNIL in 2020 according to which more than half of the parents children aged 8 to 17 would not have no devices installed to monitor their child’s activity on the internet. If the law were to be adopted, it would force manufacturers of connected objects to systematically offer parental control as soon as the device is put into service.