While I am glad to see after moving to Canada, this topic is being discussed. Back at home in India, Cyberbullying is a problem that, not many parents, even teachers are not aware of, let alone be the understanding of this issue.

I would start by acknowledging, I was not much aware of the scale of this issue until I discussed it in my class. I was even shocked to see If I google this topic; with “Canada” (or any other developed); there will good number of support articles.  But, when I search the same context with “India”; there would be more news about “Cyber Bullying ” incidents, but not much about actually talking about the extent of this issue in India.

The only useful article that talks about this issue summarize this quite well:  “Cyber Bullying: A Disregarded Issue In India”

Only when a survey by McAfee published their study mentioning  “45% of the participating children in India said they cyberbullied a stranger while worldwide 17% said the same. Also, 48% of Indian children said they cyberbullied someone they know against 21% of children globally.”; Indian media picked up this issue.

So, the above article was published in 2022. Here I am supposed to write how “cyber safety” or “digital citizenship” was approached in my school. And,  my answer nobody even knew, “it exists”.
Or maybe we have just shut our eyes to it. Extend of cyberbullying is way higher than I could have phantom.

While I was in school as a student, we had no access to the Internet; So Cyberbullying didn’t exist yet at least in the Indian context. Not to say, bullying didn’t exist, kids would get bullied at the bus stop, Lunchroom, and at Games. In India, internet access is relatively new, It been only about 5-6 years when Internet penetration and affordability increased has increased. With the rise of access to the Internet to kids, they are getting exposed to new forms of bullying “Cyber”.

Finally, I wish Indian society was more aware of this issue. But I am hopeful, we as a society will be able to bring back safety for our kids in classrooms and beyond.