When we were kids, all we wanted to do was play outside and skip school. But youngsters these days are a lot more ambitious and thoughtful. A 9-year-old girl from Shillong has developed an app that can anonymously report bullying.
Meaidaibahun Majaw, a class IV student from Shillong was a victim of bullying herself. Fellow students in school used to bully her. So she decided to do something about it.
How does a 9-year-old go about producing an app to begin with? Meaidaibahun learnt how to code online. Yep, kids are harnessing the power of technology like nobody’s business. She signed up for online coding classes provided by WhiteHat Jr, a platform aimed at teaching children the fundamentals of coding. Considering how digitally driven the world has become and that most schools don’t focus on this area of learning, it is definitely a course worth signing up your kids for.
Speaking to The Shillong Times, Meaidaibahun said, “I created the app because I loved playing games and wanted to create my own game after my father enrolled me into a coding class. However, since I experienced bullying from Nursery till Class II, and my sister too had faced a similar situation in school, I decided to create an app against bullying.”
How does the app work?
Image Credit: iStock
The app, which can be downloaded from Google Play, allows bullied children to anonymously report their bullies to parents, teachers, guardians, and friends. Once logged in, a user can provide details of incidents of bullying including the perpetrator’s name. All this information is then anonymously sent to parents and teachers, which will allow them to take the necessary action in such circumstances.
Bullying is a big problem in India and globally as well. Even famous people like Ananya Panday have been bullied online. She is now actively campaigning to end bullying on the internet.
A 2017 survey conducted by The Teacher Foundation in association Wipro Applying Thought In Schools (WATIS) found that 42% of children are bullied in schools in India. Students are made fun of, teased, and ridiculed while also getting into physical fights.
Experts believe that this shows the lack of social and emotional learning in schools across the country. While moral values are taught, they are being done in a theoretical manner. Values like compassion, kindness, and empathy are best learned in practical situations. Teaching them as abstract concepts in a book doesn’t really work.
Hopefully, more and more educators and policy makers will realise the importance of emotional and social learning in school. Denmark has already started the trend by making “empathy classes” a compulsory part of their school curriculum.
Mental health is an important issue. Children need to learn about it while young so that they can grow into well-adjusted adults.
