An app to fight cyberbullying
Growing up has always been a challenge. And among the challenges that we face throughout our lives are the more or less severe attacks that we receive from others. Physical, verbal, psychological attacks... Identifying them and knowing how to give the right response is the learning that we take with us in the backpack of experience when we overcome them.
We cannot avoid some type of aggression affecting us: either because we suffer it directly or because people around us suffer it. That is why, when we detect something that we do not like, that causes us rejection, we need to be able to share this feeling with people we trust. Friends, family, tutors, teachers, ... These people are the ones who help us to name these annoying things, to know them well and, to begin with, to identify them.
Once identified, things are less scary. Knowledge helps us understand, situate things, seek solutions and face reality to decide how we approach it.
This entire process of identification and response requires something very important: good communication. The kind that is generated when we send a message, the right person receives it, listens to us, responds and accompanies us in the process of resolving our doubt, our problem, our anxiety.
What to do if cyberbullying is detected?
We send messages and communicate in very different ways: by asking someone a question, approaching them with a look, shedding a tear, responding with a smile, hugging, talking...
These times of COVID have made good communication more difficult. Our social contact has been limited and masks have hidden facial expressions that at other times allowed us to capture the mood of our colleagues... or express our own. We have felt isolated. Fortunately, however, these are also times of technological tools that we must know how to master to put them at the service of our growth.
Technology is another way to start a conversation. How many times have we done it through a text message on any of the channels or social networks at our disposal?
When we detected that our devices were privileged communication channels between people and, above all, between adolescents, and between adolescents and adults, we decided that this had to be the right tool to deal with, among others, a particular type of aggression: cyberaggression, cyberharassment, cyberbullying .
If networks carry a "bad vibe" 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, we must also be able to use them to generate a "good vibe" or, at least, to locate certain elements that act as lifelines to which we can cling in the turbulent sea of the Internet that sometimes seems to drown us... and that is where the app, b-resol, was born.
How does the app work?
b-resolve appeals to the entire community to be used only in case of need. Intuitive, effective, safe to use, it is the commitment of the schools most willing to act to provide the educational community with healthy environments where talent can develop to its fullest. Which is what, nothing more, all teenagers deserve and which is what, nothing less, all teachers work for.
For teenagers, b-resol is a virtual button, in the form of an app that is activated by clicking on it. When pressed, this button asks for the code of your educational center. And once entered, it opens the doors to the center's communication channel: confidential, anonymous (if you want) and, above all, secure:
- The first thing you will see are the people in your center who can receive your message. You have to choose the person who you trust the most , or the one you consider most suitable to deal with the specific case you have to present. Only she will receive the message, so you have the guarantee that it will not be read by anyone else.
- Once you have chosen the person, you will be taken to a screen where, in a text box, you can write, in your own words, the situation you are experiencing or that someone close to you is experiencing. If you receive or detect this aggression via social networks (comments, direct messages, photographs, etc.), you can also attach an image to your text that illustrates the facts.
- When you send the message, the app will ask you if you want to identify yourself or if you want to send it anonymously: if you identify yourself, consider that the information you send remains confidential , so that no one will bother you for having sent the message. The person you have chosen as your interlocutor will have this information to be able to find other spaces, outside the app, to talk to you if necessary. If you do not identify yourself, the person you have chosen as your interlocutor will not have more information than what you have written in the message. It will probably be enough to act, but always remember to provide the necessary details so that your interlocutor can respond to your alert in the best possible way.
- Once the message has been sent, the system will tell you, in a chat, that it has been received. No copy will remain on your device , so we ensure that if someone has access to it, they cannot know what you said or what you left out. This way, we fully guarantee confidentiality.
If your center has the chat function enabled, the person you have chosen as your interlocutor will be able to write to you through this channel to resolve any doubts they may have. Even if you have sent the message anonymously! Totally secure, fully encrypted.
And if you don't have a mobile phone? Well, b-resol has a web version: you can also access it to send your message, although, in this case, you won't be able to chat.
In any case, once you have sent the message, you must be aware that you have done the most important thing: you have started the conversation! You have become an active agent in the school community. An agent who looks after the collective well-being, a powerful agent of change.
Because only information allows action. Only information allows us to combat fear. To act on the reality that surrounds us and bring about change.
For teachers , b-resol is an internal, secure and confidential web management environment, very intuitive to use, which allows you to receive, manage and document the actions you carry out based on the click received.
- Once the conflict has been managed, the system automatically generates an internal report of each click: a document that accredits your diligence in this very important management.
- In this b-resol web environment, teachers can also categorize the type of conflict you manage, so that b-resol will then allow you to extract statistics related to your center, which are very important when deciding and adopting improvement and prevention actions.
- From this web environment you can chat with the person who sent you the click from the b-resol app, even if it is anonymous, either to request more information, encourage the person who alerted you or to report the actions taken.
This internal web management environment from b-resol is an excellent tool for the figure of the Welfare and Protection Coordinator, now mandatory in educational centers according to the new Child Protection law.
And we're done. We adults have been young before. We've been where you are now. We hold your hand in this wonderful adventure of growing up. And we want to do it by all the means at our disposal, including technological ones. Provoking good conversations that bring you value, comfort, and a lot of learning so that tomorrow, when the teenagers who will come look you in the eye, you can understand what they are telling you, hold their hand and accompany them in this infinite chain of transmission of values that is humanity.
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