Tips and suggestions related to internet behaviors and appropriate

Or the child quickly switches off the computer when parents enter the room and refuses to talk about what he or she has been doing. However, just because a child does not engage in bullying, i.e. does not abuse or hurt others, does not mean that he or she is not affected by the problem. The psychologist says that a child can become an observer of bullying, for example by watching violent scenes on film or seeing hurtful comments on the internet. The author advises talking to children about the fact that bullying is not appropriate behaviour and that it is important to report such behaviour to adults.

Gasinska and Varslauskaitė (2018) state that according to the World Health Organization (WHO) 2016 data, Lithuania has the highest prevalence of bullying among children and adolescents compared to the other 42 countries that participated in the study. According to the Emotional Support Service "Vaikų linija" (Eng. Child Line), bullying is the second most frequently mentioned problem by children on the phone, with 3 641 calls in 2017 (the other three being: peer relationships – 5 557; difficult feelings, fear, anxiety, loneliness – 3 641; and relationships with parents – 2 751). As regards the situation in Lithuania, we can present data from the Lithuanian Communications Regulatory Authority for 2021, obtained through the Internet hotline "Clean Internet" . There were 3 558 reports of content on the internet that was prohibited or had a negative impact on minors. This is a record number of reports since the launch of the Internet Hotline. Compared to 2020 (3731 reports received), the number of reports has increased almost 2,6 times. The Lithuanian Communications Regulatory Authority’s specialists investigated every report received and followed up 380 cases: 108 reports of images of child sexual abuse have been forwarded to Internet hotlines in other countries, members of INHOPE, the international association of Internet hotlines. The 1,551 reports received, which reported genuinely prohibited content, were repetitive, i.e. the same content that had already been reported to INHOPE or the Police Department, and therefore did not result in any further action; 161 notifications were sent to ISPs, website owners and social network operators in various countries with a Notice and Take Down (NTD) flagging the presence of prohibited content on their websites or networks, with instructions to take it down as soon as possible; 80 reports have been forwarded to the Police Department for further investigation on suspicion of prohibited content dissemination on Lithuanian service stations; 31 reports suspecting information with a negative impact on minors were forwarded to the Office of the Inspector of Journalistic Ethics for further investigation.

With many aspects of life moving more and more rapidly online, we need to rethink the basic rules for staying safe on virtual space.