Hi, I’m Ria. In my freshman year, I was cyberbullied along with other kids on an Instagram account under our school’s name right before our finals. I was stressed and worried, and I felt like there was no way out. But knowing that other people were going through the same cyberbullying, I set up meetings with the principal at my school, contacted authorities for help, and even attempted to start a club to raise awareness. However, the police and principal said cyberbullying was too much of a gray area to even send an email about, the club was rejected because it was too “CS-oriented” to raise awareness about cyberbullying, and I was constantly met with rejection. After finding that I wasn’t the only one facing rejection, and there were so many people who were in the same boat as me, I was determined to continue raising awareness about online safety.
I began learning about cybersecurity and started campaigns, working with other high schoolers who had similar experiences. During this time, I realized the same issues also affected my local middle school, the one my brother went to. That’s when I realized that I had to do more than that. Posters weren’t enough to match the deaths of millions of teenagers affected by cyberbullying, the shocking statistics of the number of teenagers online that face cyberbullying, and the possibility of my brother facing cyberbullying. I wanted people to hear me and hear my voice. I wanted people to hear the voices of teenagers like me who go through the same experiences. The issue isn’t just the teenagers; parents also struggle with knowing how to limit or monitor their child’s device usage and in many cases don’t have the resources to ensure their kids are safe when online. Later, around June, one year after the incident, I started an online safety initiative called Cyber For Youth), aimed at helping students and their parents navigate the online world safely. So far, ironically, we have delivered a workshop regarding digital footprints and cyberbullying to my freshman grade at school. Knowing that they had the resources that I couldn’t receive my freshman year, knowing that I had made an impact that they actually took, and knowing that I had made some changes to the system made me feel like something could change.
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Photo credit: Image provided by the storyteller.
