Is Your Child an Internet Troll?

The problem with our new generation is that everything the so requires it very own manual for the parents to understand what they have been doing. They go LOL instead of actually laughing out loud and say BRB when they’re going to be right back. Even the idea of taking to someone later has been abbreviated to TTYL.

With such terms in the mix it is already pretty hard for a parent to understand what their child has been doing and has been up to at any given time on the cyberspace. With that being said, it is also quite hard for a parent to determine if their child is an internet troll or not.

Who is an Internet Troll?

An internet troll is a person that, more often than not, hides himself or herself behind the cloak of a sockpuppet account and uses the internet to spread hate. Such posts made by such individuals sow the seeds of discord with their words and make people argue with each other. They post inflammatory messages on online chat communities and blogs and upset people by writing racist comments about people from different parts of the world, stereotyping them and calling them names.

Psychological Mindset of a Troll

According to many surveys and researches conducted in the year 2013 and 2014, the year trolls took to the internet to spread hate speech, it has been found that people who usually troll the internet tend to possess various dark personality traits which may range from antisocial behavior to sadism to psychopathy.

These individuals take pleasure and feel good about themselves by hurting other people, much like a sadist who enjoys sexual gratification by hurting their partners in a number of ways. Similarly, these individuals also tend to be quite antisocial, using internet to voice all the nefarious intentions and cruelty bubbling inside themselves and since they cannot let go of their demons by being themselves, they invent sockpuppet personality that is usually accepted by a general group of people for their for the purpose of punishing them or maybe to relieve their loneliness.

Furthermore, these people could be the real world equivalent to the Joker in the Batman series. The Joker is a certified psychopath and since the world and the way it works doesn’t make any sense to him or her, the set out to fix it in the way they think is right and while doing that such individuals promote hate and hurt on various social media outlets.

Ultimately, the main reason for a troll to do all that he or she does is to gain a reaction. For such an individual any sort of a reaction would do – positive or negative, it doesn’t matter. As long as it riles people up and get them doing the things they wouldn’t have normally done. They are your basic tricksters, trying to get a reaction out of you by being pesky as hell.

What Role Parents Play Here?

As mentioned above, parents these days no longer have the time to keep up with their children and the fast paced world that they live in. Thus, more often than not parents make the mistake of trusting their children too much and not paying any heed to whatever they are doing online or offline. Due to this ignorant attitude of parents, children that are mentally unstable, with unadulterated access to internet turn towards trolling and bully and harass innocent people online. By doing this, while your child is not physically harming anyone, he or she is doing a number on his or her psyche which makes it very important for parents to keep an eye on their children.

Since they are unable to physically monitor their children, what such parents can do is consider investing in parental monitoring applications. These apps can help them in not only keeping a close and very keep digital eye on their children wherever they may be, it is also the perfect medium through which parents can learn whether their children are internet trolls and get them the help that they may need.

The Bottom Line

It is hard being a parent and learning that your child may be an internet troll, when you thought they didn’t have a mean bone in their body. Still, once you have discovered the terrible affliction your child has soon enough, you can work towards helping them so that they can put their trolling tendencies at rest and be good and contributing individuals in the society.