Tips for parents, young people and children: The dangers on the internet and how to avoid them!
The world of children and young people is constantly changing. As technology advances and we become increasingly interconnected, new problem areas are opening up. Children and young people are particularly often affected by (cyber) bullying or cyber grooming. The Austrian Federal Criminal Police Office provides tips and advice on how to deal with dangers from social media.
(Cyber) bullying and “happy slapping”
Cyberbullying is when someone is insulted, insulted, harassed or exposed online in front of many people over a long period of time and has been a criminal offense since January 1, 2016, although other criminal offenses can also be committed, such as coercion or insult.
Another form of bullying is “happy slapping”. Here, a physical attack, usually by several young people, on a classmate or teacher, which constitutes the offense of assault or serious bodily harm, is filmed and often published on social media in order to further humiliate the victim of the attack.
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Cyber grooming
Grooming is the targeted approach of children in order to initiate sexual contact. It represents a special form of sexual harassment that can lead to sexual abuse. With cyber grooming, initiation primarily takes place in chat rooms or on social media.
This has been a criminal offense since 2012 (Section 208a StGB). Since children and young people often feel anonymous and safe in chats, they tend to reveal more about themselves than they should, which means that the perpetrators want to gain the trust of their victims. You should make it clear to your child that caution should always be exercised when in contact with strangers and that the nickname “schmusebär17” could be someone completely different who has simply adopted a false identity.
Dissemination of criminally relevant videos
The term “sexting” refers to and includes sending or exchanging nude photos over the Internet. The trend of sending naked pictures of themselves is increasing particularly among young people, as current crime statistics show.
However, what many see as a token of love can quickly be misused and exploited by others who send these highly private images to third parties. However, it should be noted that sexually provocative images under the age of 18 fall under the criminal offense of child pornography (§ 207a StBG). If an image is sent to a third party, the person is liable to prosecution for distributing child pornography and the recipient is liable to prosecution for possession.
This also applies to realistic depictions of sexual acts on a person or an animal. If you receive messages of this type, report them and then delete them immediately. The only exception is if young people are over 14 years old, then they can send recordings to each other with mutual consent.
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Tips: Photos and videos posted online
Nowadays people often carelessly post a photo or video of their last party or vacation. However, if you change your mind later and want to delete the content again, this will work without any problems in most cases.
But what happens if a third party has taken a screenshot of your unflattering party photo and now wants to harm you by distributing it illegally via chats or postings?
Sending or publishing photos and videos that harm other people is prohibited by law, as the right to one's own image must always be protected under copyright law.
Tip: Contact the person who published your photo or video without your consent. You also have the option of contacting the website operator and requesting deletion. If the expected response does not occur, you can contact the Internet Ombudsman, who will provide you with free help.
Awareness and prevention
Basically, it is important to sensitize children early and build media skills. Children and young people must learn how to behave correctly when using social media and smartphones and develop an awareness of what can be posted and what should not be published, because as soon as status reports, photos or videos are posted online, they are difficult to completely restore be removed.
In this context, it is not only the content of a posting or photo or video that is important to mention, but also the disclosure of personal data as well as location functions or geotracking are an important point, because this is how people who are completely unknown to you in real life receive valuable information information and can also use it improperly.
Tip: “What do I want to confide to whom and to what extent?” – This question should be in the foreground before every posting. In this context, the Federal Criminal Police Office organizes the violence prevention program “Click & Check” in a school context for students aged 13 to 17 and 10 to 12. The focus here is on promoting responsible use of media and preventative legal information, particularly with regard to youth protection regulations.
Tip: seek help
In general, if you have become a victim of a crime, seek help from close people, work colleagues or even anonymously from telephone advice centers and report the crime to the police. Report harassment to website owners and block that person(s). Save evidence in the form of screenshots of the messages, pictures, videos or chats.
If you have any questions, you can contact any police station or prevention experts at the respective state criminal investigation offices at any time.
via the Austrian Federal Criminal Police Office
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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )


Article image: Shutterstock / By Robert Kneschke