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Understanding Online Behavior - In Conversation with Nirali Bhatia
When should an incident of online teasing or conflict be considered as cyberbullying? And what criteria must it meet? I would really love to know your thoughts on this
Nirali Bhatia
@NiraliBhatia · 1:29
Hey Ramya, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm delighted to be having this conversation on a very novel platform. So hello. Swell. To answer your question, what difference differentiates a trivia or a casualties or a joke meme from cyberbullying? We need to understand the definition of cyberbullying. When we are using electronic medium to either embarrass, harass or threaten the other person, that's when it counts to cyberbullying
Thank you for that clarity in Nirali. So constant changes in technology have made it really difficult for school administrators, teachers, and parents to even detect and appropriately address such cyberbullying incidents. Do you have any suggestions as to wanting signs or red flags that parents and educators should look out for
Nirali Bhatia
@NiraliBhatia · 2:55
In fact, over here in cyberbullying, at times it could get tricky for parents also to identify for two reasons. One, that not necessarily that the wounds of cyberbullying, I mean, the physical bullet wounds are visible on the body at times. However, the wounds of cyberbullying are completely emotional and they're difficult to be noticed. Sometimes children are very smart to hide them and cover them as well
You raised some very valid questions and points over there in Raleigh. This is something that needs a lot of thought and thank you for your insights on this. So getting a little bit more into the kind of situation that the Pandemic has put us all in. As you said, screen time of all age groups has increased significantly during the Pandemic
Nirali Bhatia
@NiraliBhatia · 3:56
However, identifying that what is a productive usage, whether you're using it for your education, for your work, for your creativity, for ideas, innovations, all of that can count as a productive screen time. And how much of it are you using for your entertainment? I'm not saying cut down your complete entertainment online. However, now that the options of offline interactions have increased, do not miss the opportunity to get back to the old ways of socializing
Well, thank you Nirali for that. I must add on that I have recently started implementing a Gadget free Sundays and trying to cut back drastically on my screen time. At least my phone usage time. So let's see how that pans out. But moving on. It is a fact that online behavior can easily move into a problematic level, be it gaming, shopping, or just doom scrolling on social media all the time, which even I am guilty of
Nirali Bhatia
@NiraliBhatia · 3:44
There are certain parameters basis which we can test ourselves or our children to understand which direction is the dependency on the screen moving or are we actually looking at clinical addiction? Certain parameters I will share over here, such as when you are not accessing your mobile or you're not connected to internet, are you still constantly thinking about this? Are you going through a FOMO which is fear of missing out?
Brilliantly worded, Nirali. Some great Nuggets of wisdom right there in your answer. I think every parent, every student should actually listen to this reply of yours. Thank you so much for that. So my last question is a bit tricky. What is your take on the limits of how intrusive a parent should or should not be in terms of monitoring their kids? Child tracking apps are growing
Nirali Bhatia
@NiraliBhatia · 1:53
Using these tracking apps could be a good idea only in certain extreme cases where you perceive a threat to your child's well being, but in other cases we would always recommend that it is important you invest into trust building with your child, an open communication and a nonjudgmental space where they could openly share about their new age mistakes the digital mistakes that they can make. So again, to summarize, it's time to move on to digital parenting
Karan Dev
@Karan.Dev · 0:12
Hey Nirali, thank you for this amazing conversation. I just have one question. What are your thoughts on social media affecting real relationships between people
Thank you so much, Nirali, for this very, very insightful conversation, so very relevant for the times that we are in right now. I really appreciate all the perspectives and the insights that you've shared with us, and I'm sure there would be a lot of questions coming up from the community very soon. I do hope you will be able to take on a few of them and keep this amazing conversation going
Sreeja V
@Wordsmith · 0:41
Hi Nirali. Every word that you said today in this conversation I have been listening to with great interest. Especially being a mom of an eleven year old, I am constantly worried about the influence that the digital media, the screen time, et cetera, has on him. Which brings me to my question I wanted to ask you, at what age should children be introduced to social media?
Nirali Bhatia
@NiraliBhatia · 1:49
But at the same time it can also get into a space where there is a lot of negativity, such as envy, such as victimization radicalization, and hence being able to understand and differentiate between appropriate content, fake content. How much time do I invest into this platform? All of these factors can help keep our children much safer and use social media very productively. I hope this answers your question
Nirali Bhatia
@NiraliBhatia · 2:29
As a general safety rule, I would always recommend that keep your private life private. Choose who you want to share with your special moments. It's very difficult to identify your friends and families behind the screen or your well wishes behind the screen. Also remember that whatever we are sharing on social media is going to be there forever. So it is much easier to decide that what we share needs to be something that we are going to be happy
Nimisha Dhami
@NimishaDhami · 0:28
Hello. Good evening. This might be a little off topic, but since you're a counselor, you might encounter situations or stories by patients that might affect you in a very personal level and bother you. So I want to ask you that, how do you deal with these situations? Or maybe if you have a self care or detox session plan, what do you include in your self care plans and detox sessions
Kavya Jain
@kavvyyyyaaa · 0:19
Hi so here's a question for you. In your reply you did mention about the FOMO aspect where people tend to get distracted by notifications, messages, etc. That interferes with other work. As a student, I personally have faced in any tips on resisting the Earth to keep checking my phone so often in the days
Nirali Bhatia
@NiraliBhatia · 1:15
Hey thanks Kavya for replying with your personal experience. So there are two ways to handle this. One is dig a bit deeper into in and check that where and what are you checking? What are you constantly thinking about? What is that you fear missing the most? Once we know what is it, is it the overall urge to just touch the screen and randomly look at things or is it something specific? And the way you can manage this is a very good way
Nirali Bhatia
@NiraliBhatia · 2:07
So to summarize, what I mean to say is that we've learned to make sure that we are not wearing the hat of a counselor or a psychologist or a psychotherapist. It's only and only when I am wearing that hat is where I am going to let myself be involved as a therapist. Otherwise, there are multiple roles that we play which also help us balance our work and keep us motivated going forward. Thank you so much