For those of you who are not very familiar with the segment on the Jimmy Kimmel show, “Celebrities read mean tweets,” it’s exactly as it sounds – celebrities face the scrutiny of the public eye and read negative tweets. Often times, the celebrities choose to highlight tweets that are either poorly constructed or not very creative to turn irrational insults into comedic moments.

Most of the time, the celebrities laugh through the tweets, or they even throw witty comebacks to the twitter users who posted the tweet. Recently, President Obama read mean tweets about himself. The segments, which are meant to be comical and poke fun at the people who attempt to bully through social media such as twitter, often contains lots of laughter from the audience and the celebrity themselves.

In an effort to spread awareness about cyber bullying, a play on the popular segment depicts teenagers who read mean tweets about themselves. The segment starts off with a few kids reading tweets that don’t really bother them, and then the tweets move from just name calling to hateful messages as the clip gets more serious. The spin on the segment garnered attention in recent weeks, and has presented cyber bullying in a new light.

The video begins to raise all kinds of questions for the parents of these kids, and how they can deal with bullying to help their children. Most parents are more familiar with the type of bullying that couldn’t really follow you home from school. Concerns are rising on how exactly this cyber bullying can be stopped.

With technology becoming more and more present in young people’s lives, the responsibility for parents to make sure that their children are equipped to use the technology they’re given. Parents should also check into some of the features of technology and discover if it’s something their children should be exposed to in the first place.  And that responsibility doesn’t fall to just one side of the bullying. Parents should educate their children on social media etiquette. Monitoring social media in youth will help both parents of the bully and bullied make sure that their children are using social media in more age appropriate ways. Parents should be encouraged to limit their children’s usage on social media, and if negativity is present parents shouldn’t be afraid to remove their child from the harmful environment whether they are being bullied or are the ones doing the bullying.

It’s unfortunate that this kind of thing becomes an issue, but it’s important that parents not only manage their child’s social media usage, but to keep their child from some sources of social media. We can’t remove all negativity from the world, but we can do is limit exposure, and help children cultivate the necessary skills and self-confidence to combat the negativity that exists in the world. Parental engagement and teaching children about how to remove themselves from unnecessary negativity and harmful environments are important life skills. Parents should remember that with technology, the world opens up to children. If you are allowing your kid to such exposure, then you should exercise the same cautions that they would in situations that they would if they were sending their kids physically into the real world.