At Evergreen, we always encourage bonding between parents and children and regular family dinners can be a good way to do that
But new research suggests that they can also help minimize the impacts of cyberbullying on our children. Researchers at the Institute for Health and Social Policy at McGill University in Montreal found that regular family dinners can help kids who are victims of cyberbullying better cope with its effects by increasing face-to-face communication between parents and children. The study found that as the number of family dinners increased, the mental health impacts of cyberbullying on children decreased.
“We don’t know exactly what those parents were talking about at dinner, but we do know they were spending more time together face to face,” said Catherine P. Bradshaw of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore in an article at The Huffington Post.
“Youngsters who’d been cyberbullied were more likely to also report mental health problems like anxiety, self-harm, thoughts of suicide, fighting, vandalism and substance use problems, according to results in JAMA Pediatrics September 1….Teens who were often cyberbullied were more than twice as likely to have been drunk, fought, vandalized property, or had suicidal thoughts, and were more than four times as likely to have misused drugs than those who were never cyberbullied.”
This can be especially helpful for parents because they may not always be able to monitor their children’s interactions online or through devices like smartphones. Girls tend to be cyberbullied more than boys and cyberbullying increases as the kids get older.
Additionally researchers found that any type of family, whether at dinner or driving in the car, could help.
