Editorial: Internet imposters a big problem

Cyber bullying and the impact on our kids is one of the biggest challenges this region faces.

The Northern Advocate ran a front-page story on teen cyber bullying a few months ago.

Cyber bullying and the impact on our kids is one of the biggest challenges this region faces.

Yet our readership was average that day. Because cyber bullying is something that affects thousands of teenagers, and they are not big readers of newspapers. They are digital natives, they get their news and information from their phones and devices.

A week or so ago, our son had his Facebook account hacked and someone pretending to be him contacted his friends.

He was lucky, if that is the right word ... the imposter was trying to sell a weight-loss product. Most of our son's Facebook friends recognised it as a "hack", and a pretty common one apparently.

Other teens are not so lucky - Kamo High School has highlighted the case of a pupil who had their Facebook account hacked by an imposter who made lewd requests to the pupil's friends.

Kamo High has urged parents to school up on cyber bullying and seek advice from people like John Parsons, a cyber safety expert brought to Whangarei by Tikipunga GP Mikayla McKeague.

Dr McKeague had seen MrParsons speak at a conference and thought he had an important message.

I feel for schools like Kamo, and GPs like Dr McKeague, and parents - we are making this up as we go along.

And, essentially, we are relying on common sense - for example, don't let your kids hide in their bedrooms with their devices, Mr Parsons says.

Schools and parents need to be backed up by the Harmful Digital Communications Act.

A prosecution agency is being set up, and it needs to start prosecuting. The sooner that anonymous trolls start getting outed publicly as the cowards and bullies they are, the better. And in the short term, I wonder if there is scope for schools to implement a total ban on cell phones, and create a social and learning environment where kids are encouraged to talk to each other face-to-face?

Surely our kids can survive without their phones for six or seven hours.