Repost failed: Teenagers are increasingly ignoring online security rules
Children stop following Internet safety rules. They began to post personal data on social networks more often than last year. Experts from the Russian Peace Foundation's Center for Security 2.0 have recorded a 15% increase in oversharing in open communities compared to last year. Excessive openness on the Internet has led to an increase in cyberbullying: the number of online attacks on children has increased by 7%. Who and how poisons children on the Internet and how to protect them from it — in the material of Izvestia.
Attacks on the Internet
Children began to share a large amount of personal data on social networks more often than a year earlier. In the language of professionals, this phenomenon is called "oversharing" (from the English over ("over") and share)."share")), experts from the monitoring center "Security 2.0" of the Russian Peace Foundation told Izvestia. They conducted a study of the most frequent threats that minors faced on the Internet by May 2025.
Oversharing is one of the five most dangerous digital phenomena. Most often, teenagers share geolocation, home address, places of regular stay, information about school, relatives, friends, and personal contacts. In addition, they often, including inadvertently, post explicit and compromising photos and videos on the Internet. The center's specialists have recorded a 15% increase in such content in open communities compared to the same period in 2024.
Excessive openness is directly related to the increase in cases of cyberbullying, the monitoring center said. Unlimited dissemination of personal data becomes a trigger for harassment.
According to the study, the number of episodes of such harassment in open communities has increased by 7% since the beginning of the year compared to the same period last year. We are talking about high-profile episodes, that is, those that have become noticeable to a wide range of public users with more than 100 participants.
The authors of the study were particularly concerned about the violent content intentionally created by children to publicly humiliate their peers. These may be photos or videos of awkward situations involving children, deliberately made by ill-wishers and posted online, Elena Sutormina, head of the Safety 2.0 monitoring center and first vice president of the Russian Peace Foundation, told Izvestia.
"Subsequently, these materials are often edited in an offensive or even cruel way using various visual effects or neural networks," she said.
Accuracy and control
Oversharing is dangerous because any facts, with great desire and skill, can be distorted and turned against those who posted them, Svetlana Grishaeva, associate professor at the State University of Management, Candidate of Psychological Sciences, said in a conversation with Izvestia.
— At first glance, information that is completely harmless can be ridiculed, presented as stupid, and used as bait, — said the expert. — And if before the advent of social networks this information was distributed through a relatively narrow circle of acquaintances, now it often becomes available to an almost unlimited circle of users who are not always friendly.
Any excessive frankness, and not only in social networks, is risky, as it provides an opportunity to get to know a person better, which means it is more effective to influence him, Svetlana Grishaeva noted.
— This does not mean that you need to completely shut down. But you need to clearly outline the circle of people you can trust. There are unlikely to be many such people," the expert emphasized.
It is necessary to explain to the child what information should not go beyond the boundaries of the house and the immediate environment. It should not be prohibited, but explained, showing by examples the need to control information and the negative consequences of non-compliance with these rules.
Cyberbullying affects the most vulnerable, painful aspects of a person's life, so the more information an aggressor has about a person, the easier it is for him (even by random search) to find these pain points, put pressure on them and achieve his goals, the expert concluded.
Who will be responsible for bullying
In March 2025, the Commissioner for Children's Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, announced that her office was receiving a large number of harassment-related complaints.
At the same time, VTsIOM published the results of its research on harassment on the Internet. Thus, 64% of respondents consider the lack of upbringing of aggressor children in families to be the main reason for bullying. Another 67% of respondents believe that involving parents of such children in working together to reduce aggression on the Internet can be an effective measure.
Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova
The answers of Russians demonstrate that when faced with harassment on the Internet, there is no clear algorithm of actions to solve the problem, VTsIOM experts noted. "Everyone is trying to deal with it the best they can. This may indicate a lack of awareness among citizens about all the opportunities that exist today in the fight against cyberbullying and its consequences," they wrote.
Another serious problem is the active use of neural networks to generate and disseminate false information, the center's experts emphasized.
"Students who actively interact with these systems often do not have sufficient skills to critically evaluate the generated content,— said Elena Sutormina. — This makes them vulnerable to manipulation, fakes, and distortion of information.
The lack of media literacy in this area poses serious risks to education, the formation of a worldview and the personal safety of children, said the head of the center.
"We recently approached Sergey Kravtsov, the Minister of Education, with a proposal to develop and introduce a mandatory course on safe interaction with artificial intelligence and neural networks into the school curriculum," said Elena Sutormina. — Its main goals are to develop critical thinking, applied skills and improve media literacy to counter disinformation.
As monitoring has also shown, one in ten teenagers in Russia suffers from digital nomophobia (from the combination of no mobile phone) — this is an obsessive fear of being left without a smartphone, losing or breaking the device, losing touch with the world and information.
Every second teenager suffers from "hyper-connectivity", that is, he spends more than nine hours a day on the phone.
— Experts distinguish between low (no more than one hour), medium (no more than three hours) and high (no more than six hours) stages of a child's Internet connection during the day, — said Elena Sutormina. — At the same time, almost all the children who took part in the study underestimate the real time online: their words do not match the time recorded by their phone.
In 2024, the number of high-profile episodes related to bullying of minors on the Internet increased by 15%, the center's experts estimated. They recorded about 8 thousand cases when the number of active or passive participants in bullying exceeded 100 people, compared to 7 thousand in 2023.
How to protect a child from cyberbullying
Russian legislation provides extensive opportunities to protect children from cyberbullying, Ilya Vasilchuk, a judicial lawyer and an expert on the security of electronic transactions, told Izvestia. The main thing is to record the facts of the attack in a timely and correct manner and immediately contact the competent authorities to resolve the conflict.
— For example, the federal law on education obliges educational institutions to protect students from violence and aggression, — said the lawyer. — If the harassment is serious and includes insults, threats, blackmail, dissemination of defamatory information, contact the police with a statement.
Harassment on the Internet is a criminal offense that can fall under several articles at once, Ilya Vasilchuk recalled. Among them is an article on defamation if abusers spread false information discrediting the honor and dignity of a child (art. 128.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Article on violation of privacy (Article 137 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), if the aggressors use the child's personal information and distribute it publicly. The article on illegal access to personal information (art. 138 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), which can be used in case of hacking of pages in social networks or distribution of private photos.
— If the aggression has reached a critical level and is accompanied by threats, statements provoking suicidal thoughts, the case may be initiated under the article on driving to suicide (art. 110 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), — said the lawyer. — When it comes to gross violations that do not reach the level of a criminal offense (this includes insults, humiliation of honor and dignity in public), the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation has Article 5.61 in this case.
How to behave to parents
If a child is confronted with bullying on the Internet, the main thing that parents can do is to restore an emotional connection with him, says family and child psychologist Maria Todorova.
— A child should focus not on peers, but on adults whom he trusts and who can protect him, — said the psychologist. — When attachment to peers becomes the leading factor, the child loses stability: any pressure, criticism or rejection from the group is perceived as a threat to his existence. Therefore, the task of parents is to return themselves to the role of the main adult in the child's life.
First of all, it is important to be close, not waiting for the child to tell about bullying. He may remain silent out of fear, shame, or distrust. It is not necessary to interrogate or immediately look for the culprits: this puts you off. Parents should show that they are on the side of the child. Attention, care, time together, calm conversations without evaluation are the foundations on which trust is built. And it is this trust that allows the child to withstand difficult situations.
— When there is a significant adult nearby, to whom you can come with pain, shame, anxiety, this is already protection, — said Maria Todorova. — The rest can be arranged later — to discuss digital security, contact the school, restrict access to an aggressive environment. But all this will be effective only after the main line, the attachment line, is restored.
In this situation, the task of adults is not to protect the child from the entire Internet, which is virtually impossible, but to limit the attack surface in time and minimize the possibility of risk, says Maxim Golovlev, managing director of iTPROTECT.
"And here, basic digital hygiene comes first," the expert said. — Restrictions in the form of parental controls, a ban on third-party applications, and the installation of applications to protect the device from malicious software, phishing, and web filtering must be enabled on the device.
All accounts have two—factor authentication, no automatic saving of payment data and online card usage, and restrictions on children's payment cards. You should not tell your child the password code for your phone or banking application, and, of course, you should restrict the child's access to their parent's bank cards.
Any permission on the device that the child does not recognize as a risk should be disabled, the expert added. The fewer rights a device has, the less likely an attacker is to use them. At the same time, it is important to understand that no setting can replace an adult's explanation. A child should not be afraid to say that someone is asking for his photo, offering money, pressing for pity or threatening.
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