It can be difficult to stop cyberbullying as it can happen in multiple places at once, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to help prevent it from happening. Here are our tips to stay safe online:

Protect Accounts and Devices - Always use passwords to protect your accounts and never share them. Using different passwords for each account helps prevent hacking.

Use Privacy Tools and Settings - Go through each social media account with your child and help them set their privacy settings to the most secure settings. This means making accounts private, preventing people from tagging them, requiring other people to get permission before sharing one of their photos, and so on.

Keep Personal Stuff Private - Never share your personal information with people online. You don't know who you can trust, and people may not be who they claim to be.

Manage Location Sharing - Some smartphones allow users to share their location with friends. This means that if they share their location with people, these people will always know where they are. Have a discussion with your child about who they can share their location with or if they can share it at all.

Teach Them to Think Before Posting - Ensure they don't have any personal information in the background of images such as a home address, driving license, or nudity. Your child may not know what a digital footprint is, so you should teach them the importance of it and how once something is on the internet, it's there forever.

Conduct a Social Media Audit - It is important you discuss with your child or teen what they are posting and whether or not you think it is appropriate, and explain to them why. Help them understand why certain things shouldn't be shared and how they can protect themselves.

Log Out When Using Public Devices - It is very important to log out of your accounts when using public computers and devices to protect your personal information such as bank details, passwords, and private messages.

Refuse to Respond to Cyberbullies - It may seem very hard at times, but not reacting to bullies is important. Acting as if you don't care makes you seem like the bigger person and hopefully they will get bored eventually and the bullying will stop.

Report the bullies - Most websites and platforms will have an option for you to report something, whether that's reporting a post to get it taken down, reporting accounts, or reporting messages. Doing this will get the person temporarily or permanently banned or blocked from your profile.