Covering kids to conquer bullying
AUSTRALIAN parents are being offered cyber-bullying insurance for the first time as a new way to deal with “relentless” and traumatic online attacks against their children.
The unusual insurance covers costs such as counselling and unpaid leave taken to negotiate solutions.
Experts and victims have cautiously welcomed the product with one parent saying it could provide guidance in confusing and emotional times.
Cyber-bullying affects one in five children aged eight to 17 in Australia, according to the eSafety Commission, with incidents up 30 per cent last year.
Emergence Insurance founder Troy Filipcevic said he developed the Australian cyberbullying coverage over three years, basing it on insurance offered in five other countries.
“When I was going to school, it (bullying) only used to happen in the schoolyard. You’d go home safe,” he said.
“Now our kids are being bullied in the schoolyard but when they go home and open social media it’s there as well. It’s like having bullying on a megaphone.”
The cyber-bullying protection plans include “critical guidance” counselling to teach families how to handle incidents, access to forensic IT experts to remove or hide abusive online posts from search results, and coverage for unpaid leave taken by parents to negotiate solutions with schools or attend counselling sessions.
Mr Filipcevic said the plans had already been taken out by some private schools, “high net-worth individuals” and concerned parents.
The cost ranges from $99 to $400 a year for $50,000 to $1m worth of coverage for cyberbullying and other online harms, such as identity theft and cyberstalking.
Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said she could see why there was a market for cyber-bullying insurance in Australia.
“About 15 per cent of our cases are direct threats of harm: telling a kid to kill themselves, threatening their safety or the safety of their family,” she said. “But more and more kids are creating ‘phoenixing’ accounts where they’ll set up four or five accounts with the goal of targeting that child. The moment one account is taken down another one pops up. It’s a relentless attack.”