How to Protect Yourself from Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is a term that anyone with an active online life has likely encountered. It can range from negative comments and trolling to insults, humiliation, and even full-blown harassment. People who attract public attention, whether for their strengths or weaknesses, often become targets of online bullying. For some, a large number of haters might indicate success and popularity, but for others, it can be a source of self-doubt and genuine danger. We’ve decided to delve into this issue and provide you with a guide on what to do if you’re being harassed online.

Choose Your Conversation Partners Wisely

Silence is golden, especially on the internet. To avoid becoming a victim of cyberbullying, it’s crucial to choose your conversation partners carefully. Avoid sharing details of your life with people you don’t know well. If you enjoy online communication, be cautious about opening up to new “friends,” as what you say can be used against you. The same goes for detailed written accounts of your life, memoirs, and revelations in the public domain.

Remove Compromising Photos

To protect yourself and the information on your profile, you can limit access to viewing or commenting on it. However, if you don’t want to be the center of such attention, stop posting compromising photos. You can ignore negative comments or continuously block haters, but it’s better not to give the public a reason to judge you or think poorly of you in the first place. Additionally, your photos can be used to create false rumors about you. In a few minutes, an internet sadist can create a masterpiece in Photoshop that you won’t easily get rid of.

Never Justify Yourself

The worst thing you can do if the harassment has already started is to participate in it. You can leave one witty and brilliant response to the haters’ statements, but it’s better not to engage in communication with such people. Their goal is not to have a conversation with you, nor to help you become better, nor to provide constructive criticism. Trolls and haters aim to knock you off balance and make you wallow in your own arguments as quickly as possible. Delete comments, block users, and limit access to your profile. You can make a post with an official statement to draw the attention of sympathizers, but do not argue with those who seek to blacken your name.

Don’t Believe the Threats

Cyberbullying can be accompanied by threats, online stalking, harassment, and real danger to life. However, as a rule, haters are always people with whom it makes no sense to sort things out. They will never act openly, will not come to a personal meeting, and will not agree to take responsibility for their words. It will be difficult to track the real profiles of these users if the situation suddenly becomes more acute. Internet harassment is convenient because you can exert strong psychological pressure on a person without leaving your home. Therefore, do not lose self-control—after all, you can always contact the police, having previously taken screenshots, recordings of conversations, and confirmations of threats.

Ignore

No trend can live forever if no one buys into it. Cyberbullying can reach extremes, but it still won’t be your eternal punishment if you don’t feed into it. If you find yourself being harassed, act quickly: delete all ambiguous information about yourself, block access to your social networks, use the blacklist as intended, and most importantly—do not react to those who try to bully you. It sounds like they are teasing you at school, but that’s human psychology—you can’t hype something that doesn’t exist.