Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this discussion.
Online bullying and its consequences are a reflection of offline realities. Both the children who are the bullies and their victims need counselling and a social support system. Maybe the issue of bullying should be introduced into the school curriculum (eg in Social Ethics) or Say-no-to-bullying clubs started.
Charity begins at home...and so does bullying. I think bullies are created, not born, so the family situation also needs to be addressed.
Is bullying glorified in Kenyan TV shows and songs? Food for thought.
Kenya is a patriarchal society: does gender play a role in who is a bully and who is bullied?
In short, this issue cannot be dealt in isolation. All the other interrelated aspects must also be addressed.
Regards,
Mildred Achoch.
On Thursday, June 29, 2017, Rosemary Koech-Kimwatu via kictanet <
kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
Hi Francis,
In regards to online bullying neither us nor our children are safe. There have recently been deaths directly attributable to cyber bullying where a lady committed suicide and online crime waves like the blue whale challenge.
In regards to capacity there is need to incvest heavily in cyber crime units in the police force and generally have operations digitised so that our forces are equiped to deal with the new frontier for crime.
One of the main challenges in tackling the offense are finding the main perpetrators, like in instances of mass cyber bullying where stories go viral in various channels, it may be impossible to even know the person who originally posted.
We as a nation are generally ill prepared. Parents must be made aware of protection mechanisms especially for children.
Kind regards,
Rosemary Koech-Kimwatu.
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