Meet Jane Clementi, a brave mother of three sons who lost a son to revenge porn incident. Her 18 year-old son, Tyler Clementi, committed suicide, jumping off the Washington Bridge after posting this status on his Facebook account, “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.”
This happened back in 20101 but her mother still feels the pain and the shock is not over yet. She lost a son, full of life and promising future ahead. He was in college and he would have been in his career’s initial stages today but he left all that there and then and chose to walk away from his own life. Millions of teens commit suicide every year, globally and one of the emerging causes is when someone uses digital technology to mock them or humiliate them. Young Tyler met the similar tragic fate. But her mother is one of the strong, brave people who step up and do something to prevent it from happening to others. And that’s how Tyler Clementi Foundation came into being in 2011.
The foundation urges everyone to become Upstander rather being a bystander. Standing up to any act of cyber bullying or harassment and not simply being a bystander or a party to it. Revenge porn is one of the fast-emerging teen challenges and perhaps the most traumatic to cope up with.
I’m an #Upstander against bullying. Join the movement w/ me & @TylerClementi! #Day1 Who’s with me? @tyleroakley? http://t.co/4u1NmLemuJ
— Jesse Tyler Ferguson (@jessetyler) June 24, 2015
What is Revenge Porn?
Revenge porn is sharing of sexually explicit pictures, videos or any other multimedia content with others without the subject’s consent to embarrass or humiliate a person. As children reach puberty, they tend to do silly things, sometimes just for fun pr put of curiosity. It can become a big mess if someone deliberately tries to humiliate them by making those pictures or videos public. It’s a growing menace that’s haunting and ruining lives of thousands of pre-teens and teens. Have a look at the stats in this infographic:
Source: EndRevengePorn.Org
What to Do If Your Child Becomes a Victim?
If your child becomes a victim of nonconsensual pornography (NCP), you need to immediately act. Luckily, there are Revenge Porn Laws in 26 states in the US and you can consult them for the litigation. Also, Google has a Revenge Porn Policy and responds to requests from the NCP victims and remove the nude and explicit images from its search engines. So, if your child comes up to you with the bad news, instead of confronting them, immediately visit End Revenge Porn website and submit a request to Google to take down the images from its search engine. Other tech behemoths- Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. have also banned Revenge Porn. So it only takes a little effort and patience to control the damage before you can file charges on the precipitator. But is it enough?
Caution is better than Cure: How Parents can Keep Eye on What their Kids are Sharing
There are foundations to help you fight online harassment, there are laws protecting you and there are bans but what’s more important is keeping an eye on what your kids do online. What kind of content they share with friends and most importantly: who they hang out with. Many parents don’t know the whereabouts of their children and don’t really know their friends which are extremely important. You need to know who your daughter is dating and your kid’s sexual orientation. Talk to them openly about online privacy and leaving any digital footprint that may haunt them later.
For that matter, parents can rely on FamilyTime parental control app. This app can be installed on the children’s Android or iPhones and parents can pair that to FamilyTime parent’s app on their phones. This way parents can have a detailed look at the child’s phone activities including:
- Phone logs
- Contacts
- Browsing history
- Installed apps
- Location history
And can also manage the content and time across their devices including:
- Watchlisting suspicious contacts
- Blocking apps
- Limiting screen time on phones and tabs
- Geo-fencing certain places
- Locking phone
It’s time we all put in our effort to end revenge porn and protect our teens from online privacy invasion and NCP. Beware what your teens share with parental control applications and help make a difference!