A recent survey showed that 50% of young people of the connected generation, aged between 14 and 24 years of age, had at some point and to some extent been subjected to a new phenomenon called Textual Harassment.
Textual harassment is defined as digitally abusive behavior that is of non-obvious and furtive sort that parents cannot easily detect. It is the sort of bullying that if not detected in time can have serious consequences for a child.
Since texting and other kinds of digital messaging is the primary means of communication among the younger generation today, it is the form that bullying is also assuming.
The reason that a parent may remain oblivious to this phenomenon is the fact that children have exclusive access to their own phone, so whatever text messages are received, whether it is at 2 AM at night or otherwise, parents are none the wiser as to time, contents or frequency.
Parents need to keep up to date with technology that their kids use. Understand that phones are not right, rather they are a privilege and parents have a right to look at messages if they think that something may be wrong. You can use certain services such as My Mobile Watchdog to keep tabs on your child’s cell phone use.
