CYBER-AID-CYBERBULLYING-APP

Problem Statement

The more we venture into the virtual world, the more our lives are becoming susceptible to Cyberbullying. With the advancement in the virtual era, the issue has been on a rise. It is becoming a norm, but it shouldn’t be. Cyberbullying is a very underestimated issue, the gravity that it carries is very big though. With so many social media and gaming platforms emerging and the tender age that children in this age begin using this platforms, cyberbullying is bound to happen. Mature people are able to deal with it to some extent, but adolescents are heavily impacted by it. It causes low self-esteem, depression and has even led to some suicides in some cases.

Inspiration

The inspiration came after one of our teammates watched a Netflix documentary named Audrie and Daisy. It portrays the lives of two teenage girls, who in their teenage were raped and then heavily cyber bullied by their peers after the incident was leaked out. While Audrey ended up committing a suicide some days after the incident, Daisy fought and made it till the age of 23, when she also ended up taking the same step. There are so many silent victims of cyberbullying all around the world.

Cyber Aid

Parents in many places find it overwhelming to keep up with the technologies. Teenagers often experience cyberbullying, some parents might not even know that their minor kid is being bullied on these platforms. This is where Cyber-Aid fits in--it makes it easier for parents to monitor any bad messages received by the kid, keep up with this issue through the latest news, statistics, and tweets, report any such incident, and with expert guidance on how to prevent and handle their kids if they are being subjected to it. It also includes information on how to monitor their kids activities and use parental controls on the most common social media platforms. For the normal user module, the main thing would be the reporting section, anonymously or using their real identity, and forward the same to your trusted contacts and educators.

Features:

Parent Module

1. Signup: Enter full name, email and password.

2. Login: Login using email id and password.

3. HomePage:

   1. Harmful Message Monitoring: On clicking this you will see a list of harmful SMS received on the phone of your kid, only if
      1. The person(your child) has signed up on Cyber-Aid.
      2. The person has added your Cyber-Aid account email id as their parent id.
      3. The person has given permission to Cyber-Aid to read their messages. All of the SMS received by your child will not be displayed here. Only the ones which are detected as having bad words will be shown. This filtering is done by the api created by us. It works like a profanity filter right now, but we plan to replace it with an NLP api to detect messages indicating bullying. The feature is available only on Android phones.
   2. Trending Tweets: We realise that even though we are all used to this virtual world, some of us(mainly the previous generation) are still not that tech savvy and not able to keep up with everything in the world. We aim to make parents aware of this issue. In this section, you can find all the trending tweets pertaining to the issue of cyberbullying which can definitely open your eyes and can help you protect and help your kid.
   3. Latest News: Find all the latest news about cyberbullying in one place.
   4. Alarming Statistics: These stats are meant to open your eyes to how prevalent this issue is, what are the chances that your kids might be getting cyberbullied and what according to teens would be contributed to cyberbullying.

4. Report Screen:
   While searching on all possible issues related with cyberbullying, we faced a very peculiar issue. When we searched ‘How to report cyberbullying in India’, the most concrete solution, i.e. to post a complaint to an official id came up in the last post. So we came up with the feature of ‘Reporting an incident of cyberbullying’. We created an api in which has the official ids to forward the complaint to, of most of the countries. You don’t have to scavenge the internet to get one.

• Just write your complaint and attach any evidence you have(we support images, audio and video attachments).
• Next you also have the option to forward it to any/all of the emergency contacts that you set in your profile.
• You also have the option to send it anonymously, as in when you submit the complaint, it won’t be forwarded to the portal directly. It would be forwarded to a social worker/volunteer who would then take up the issue and do the necessary step.
• If the anonymous option is not selected the complaint will be forward to the official id of your country, dealing with such issues.
• On clicking the submit button, the above mentioned things will be done.
• You can also click on the call button and you will be redirected on your selected provider for calling with the number of the helpline number of your set country.

5. Guidance Screen: The screen guides you on ‘What is Cyberbullying’, ‘What can you do if your child is being cyberbullied’, ‘What advice you should give to your child to keep in mind’, ‘How to prevent your kid from being cyber bullied and not to cyberbully to someone else either, ‘Social media apps monitoring steps’.

6. Profile Page: You can see your basic details like name, gender, age, contact number, location and email id. You can also see a list of your emergency/trusted contacts with their basic details. All this can be edited you anytime.

Child Module

1. Signup: Enter full name, email and password. You can also add a parent email id, and if given permission to read texts by you, any foul SMS you receive will be shown to the parent when they use the entered parent id to register on the app.

2. Login: Login using email id and password.

3. HomePage: The homepage is basically a guide for the general users(i.e. youth/teens), which answers some of the basic, necessary and most obvious questions about cyberbullying. Tink, the chatbot: We realise that a person experiencing cyberbullying, suffers from many mental health issues viz. loneliness, depression etc. By tapping on the chatbot fab, you can talk to Tink, whenever you feel alone. Tink will try its best to make you happy.

4. Report Screen:
   While searching on all possible issues related with cyberbullying, we faced a very peculiar issue. When we searched ‘How to report cyberbullying in India’, the most concrete solution, i.e. to post a complaint to an official id came up in the last post. So we came up with the feature of ‘Reporting an incident of cyberbullying’. We created an api in which has the official ids to forward the complaint to, of most of the countries. You don’t have to scavenge the internet to get one.

• Just write your complaint and attach any evidence you have(we support images, audio and video attachments).
• Next you also have the option to forward it to any/all of the emergency contacts that you set in your profile.
• You also have the option to send it anonymously, as in when you submit the complaint, it won’t be forwarded to the portal directly. It would be forwarded to a social worker/volunteer who would then take up the issue and do the necessary step.
• If the anonymous option is not selected the complaint will be forward to the official id of your country, dealing with such issues.
• The list of email ids of all your teachers on Google classroom will also be shown, using the Google Classroom API. You can also send it to any/all of them. This feature was added
• On clicking the submit button, the above mentioned things will be done.
• You can also click on the call button and you will be redirected on your selected provider for calling with the number of the helpline number of your set country.

5. Profile Page: You can see your basic details like name, gender, age, contact number, location and email id. You can also see a list of your emergency/trusted contacts with their basic details. All this can be edited you anytime. By clicking on fetch teachers on Google classroom button, you can also get a list of emails of all your teachers on Google classroom, using the Google classroom API.

Tech Stack/Technologies Used

• React Native
• Node.js
• Google Firebase
• MongoDb
• Google Cloud
• Canva(for graphic design)

Future scopes:

• Replace profanity filter with NLP to detect messages indicating cyberbullying.
• Implement text detection in images uploaded as evidences in images and use NLP in that to detect cyberbullying.
• Implement a more comprehensive mental health support for the users viz talks with counsellors/ volunteers/ social workers.
• Add parental lock in app through a pin so any one else can't delete the messages shown in the 'Bad messages received by your child' list.
• Venture further in the parent module by adding the functionality of live tracking of their kid.
• Post listings of near by workshops / virtual workshops on cyber bullying and mental health.