GUWAHATI: A nine-year-old girl from Shillong has created an Anti-Bullying App, which helps children report their bullies anonymously and alert their parents, teachers, and friends about the same.
Meaidaibahun Majaw, a Class IV student from Nongthymmai, had been subject to bullying herself by other students in school.
“I created the app because I loved playing games and wanted to create my own game after my father enrolled me into a coding class. However, since I experienced bullying from Nursery to Class II, and my sister too had faced a similar situation in school, I decided to create an app against bullying,” Meaidaibahun told The Shillong Times on Thursday.
The Anti-Bullying App, which can be downloaded from Google Play, was created while the little girl learnt coding on WhiteHat Jr, which is a platform that harnesses the natural creativity of kids (6 to 14 years) with coding tools to help them create professional-ready digital products of global impact. Once logged in, the child can anonymously share details of the incident including the name of the bully and give detailed explanation on how they were mistreated. This notifies their parents and teachers and encourages them to take necessary disciplinary action to nip the problem in the bud.Bullying is a rampant issue with kids across the world with a UNESCO report finding that one in three children globally experiences bullying in school and a similar proportion are affected by physical violence. A 2018 Comparitech study has also shown that Indian children are the most prone to cyber-bullying compared to kids across the world. Another example is of 16-year-old Jishnu Baruah from Dibrugarh, Assam who has created the Light Bag app, which allows kids to shed off load from their school bags.
The app also helps teachers update the name of the books and notebooks they want the student to carry on a specific day.An estimate of the weight in the student’s bag can be known through the app and accordingly animations are shown to the teachers to convey the student’s discomfort depending on the weight of the bag. Based on the weight calculations, teachers can reduce the number of books so that students can carry lighter bags to school.
“I had seen children struggling while carrying their heavy bags which had unnecessary books on a given day. So since I was interested in game designing, I decided to come up with the app in May last year. The app allows teachers to empathise with the students and facilitate them to carry only the requisite books for the day,” the Class X student of St Xavier’s School Dibrugarh, said.
Karan Bajaj, founder and chief executive officer, WhiteHat Jr, said that children today are aware of societal issues and want to contribute in their own way to address them.
“Teaching kids to code not only provides a well-structured way to introduce them to rational thinking and problem-solving skills, but also improves their logical and analytical thinking, and increases creativity and concentration. We are witnessing many young kids who are creating some extremely creative, high utility digital applications that will make a lasting impact,” Bajaj said.
