Category: For Parents & Teachers

Taiwan Professor Benson Yeh has cautioned Parents not to let Childrean treat home electronics products as monsters, because that attitude is going to prevent Taiwan from producing the next generation of creatives and innovators.

At a seminar, the electrical engineering specialist described parents as the biggest potential obstacles to the development of new electronics talent in Taiwan. He said the students who most often dropped out at NTU were those who had not been allowed to use computers, smartphones or tablets before they started their university studies.

Parents needed to abandon the attitude that phones amounted to games, and had to see them as instruments instead, Yeh said. He insisted that if Taiwanese wanted to work at the next generation of innovative enterprises in Taiwan, they needed to acquire the capabilities of working in a digital society and of cooperating across borders.

The COVID-19 pandemic showed that many teachers, students, and parents did not have the required digital literacy to conduct virtual classes, according to Yeh, who created a Facebook group where 140,000 teachers help each other become familiar with the necessary technology.

Braden Markus, 15, had what his mother said was an “amazing weekend of football” on Saturday, Oct. 21, 2021. To celebrate, the Ohio teen ordered his favorite food, then “spent the rest of the night doing homework, playing Xbox with his cousins and sleeping,” his mom wrote in a Facebook post.

“Typical life of a teenager,” Jennifer Argiro-Markus, Braden’s mom, added.

Less than 24 hours later, Braden died by suicide. His family believes he was a victim of cyber “sextortion.” Local authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the case.

‘I am only 15, why are you doing this to me?’

At 11:01 a.m. the next morning, after Braden started working on his driver’s education test and more school work, his mom said a “cyber bully friended” him on Instagram, “posing as a high school girl.”

After five minutes of messaging back and forth, Argiro-Markus wrote that the person asked Braden to “message using Google Hangout.” Braden agreed, but the person he was chatting with was not who they claimed to be.

“Things went south within 30 minutes,” his mom wrote on Facebook.

The online predator sent her son pictures, continuing to claim to be the girl in the photographs. The person then spent the next five minutes “hounding” Braden to send a picture, who his mom wrote repeatedly said no, citing his age.

“The hacker kept the pressure up,” Braden’s mom wrote. “If B got off the account, the hacker would hound him on his Instagram messenger. Eventually, B caved and sent a picture. The Monster knew exactly what to say and what to post to get into a 15-year-old’s brain.”

Once the hacker had a picture of Braden, Argiro-Markus said her son was threatened and told to pay the predator $1,800 or “else the monster” was going to release it among other pictures the hacker took from Braden’s Instagram account.

“The messages go on and on for 27 minutes,” she wrote. “The last five minutes of B’s life, he said over and over again, ‘I am only 15, why are you doing this to me? I am only 15, you will ruin my life.’ It is a thread that in a way I wish I never read, but here we are.” (In her post, Argiro-Markus explained she had to wait 10 months to get a court order to have Apple unlock her son’s phone so she could see what happened.)

At 11:28 a.m., Braden died by suicide.

“He was the kid that was literally loved by everyone, family, friends, teachers you name it,” Argiro-Markus told TODAY Parents. “His smile lit up a room wherever he went. He enjoyed sports, Xbox with his cousins and pranks with his buddies.”

Now, Argiro-Markus is warning parents of the dangers of online sexploitation and honoring her son’s memory with the Braden Markus Memorial Scholarship Fund.

“Make sure you talk to your kids about online cyber crimes. Make sure you tell them over and over that when they make a mistake to come to you, nothing is worth their lives,” the mom wrote on Facebook. “We can’t help our kids if we don’t speak up, and warn them, and try to stop these predators, and you can’t warn them unless you know about it.”

What is online or cyber sextortion?

“Sextortion is a term that is being used in recent years to describe a type of extortion in which a predator will use a sexually explicit image or video of another person in order to either engage with them in a sexual or exploitive relationship online or offline, or to exploit money from their victims,” Donna Hughes, president and CEO of Enough is Enough, a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing the internet-enabled exploitation of children, told TODAY.

Experts in the UAE have once again warned parents to watch out for their kids’ involvement in “unusual activities”, following the emergence of TikTok videos that encourage the youth to try the so-called ‘blackout challenge’.

This particular challenge — which has been in the global spotlight since last year — dares kids to hold their breath until they pass out. In 2021, two girls in the US died after taking part in it, prompting parents to sue the platform.

“Parents need to set boundaries about Internet usage. They should also have an open dialogue and honest conversations with children about Internet safety,” said Dr Nada Omer Mohamed Elbashir, a psychiatrist at Burjeel Hospital, Abu Dhabi.

Adults can help youngsters understand the guidelines better by setting an example and showing them how social media can be used safely, Dr Elbashir added.

“Use parental controls and safe search settings while children browse the Internet. Be up to date on privacy settings. Ensure that you are around when your child is using social media or the Internet, and make sure they are following the age requirement when they want to download Facebook or TikTok or any other app.”

Online bullying

Wellness coaches and psychology experts highlighted that bullying is also prevalent on social media, particularly among teenagers.

It is possible that some kids, they said, are being bullied into doing life-threatening challenges online. Some do it for likes, too.

Girish Hemnani, a life coach in Dubai, said: “To access and implant a suggestion in the subconscious mind, one of the ways is to overload the conscious mind. This is what is happening at the mass level via social media apps.”

“The conscious mind is still developing for children and yet to discern from the thrill and threat, not being able to think it through and be cautious of possible consequences for oneself and/or for others,” Hemnani added.

Even school authorities have a role to play in keeping kids safe online.

“Challenges made popular on social media, such as the ‘Game of Death Challenge’, are a serious concern that should not be overlooked by school authorities,” said Nora Eldrageely, middle school counsellor at GEMS American Academy – Abu Dhabi.