SocialMediaResponsibly: If cyber-bullying was invented, why haven’t schools taught cyber-kindness?

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When Arjun Nikam Polaki (then 7 year old) moved to Singapore, he tried everything he could to fit in. “I dropped my Indian culture, I dropped my Indian accent, and still no one was kind to me for who I was,” the 11-year-old recalls. “When I came back to India, I had brought some Singapore culture with me too, including the accent. People made fun of me for that as well. No one was kind enough to say, ‘Do you want to play with me?’”

The experience stayed with him. So did the question.. “If cyber bullying was invented, why are we not talking about cyber kindness?”

That question became the foundation of The Kindness Superpower Podcast, a show Polaki now hosts with his mother, Poonam Nikam with one simple aim: “to spread the global virus of kindness.”

From Playground Exclusion to Podcasting for Change

What began as a personal coping mechanism has quickly grown into a broader movement. After the family returned from Singapore, Polaki struggled with being “different” all over again. He dressed differently, preferred football to cricket, wore hoodies in Mumbai’s heat, and spoke with a changed accent. The response from other children was familiar.

“Suddenly it was, ‘How can you not know how to play cricket?’” Nikam, says. “That’s when I realised this had very little to do with the country and everything to do with empathy and kindness. As adults, we don’t teach this nearly enough.”

Before the podcast, Nikam had already begun working with schools, using conversations and art therapy to help children express what they were experiencing. The children, she says, had a lot to say. The podcast simply gave them a microphone.

Now on its fifth episode, produced professionally in a Mumbai studio and distributed on Spotify and YouTube, the show features guests ranging from actor Shweta Tripathi to the editor of Tinkle Comics, discussing kindness without preaching.

Polaki even tackled the culture of “roasting” in one episode. “Roasting is often unkind, but it has become so normalised that people feel they have to accept it,” he says. “If you don’t know how to roast back, you don’t know what to do. We wanted to look at it from the perspective of kindness.”

Children Building Cyber Resilience

Polaki’s work has now moved far beyond podcasting. He will be speaking on Safer Internet Day at a major Mumbai event hosted by Responsible Netism, where he will join a panel titled “Bouncing Back from Digital Harm.”

Sonali Patankar, Founder, Responsible Netism, says the organisation has spent 13 years evolving from cyber security to cyber well-being.

“We have empowered over 18 lakh children and 10 lakh adults across India and handled more than 65,000 cases of online distress,” she says. “What makes this moment different is that children themselves are now shaping the conversation.”

This week, 25 children from across the country will participate in India’s first National Cyber Psychology Conference by children for children, presenting a safeguarding manual to the government on digital safety, mental well-being, AI, gaming, and resilience.

“Children are the primary users of digital platforms, yet policies are designed without fully understanding their lived experiences,” Sonali says. “That is what we are changing.”

The School Gap: Where Kindness Falls Through

While awareness is growing, education systems remain unprepared.

Dr. Ted Mockrish, Head of School at the Canadian International School, Bengaluru, says children today are losing basic human interaction skills.

“Children now struggle with something as simple as ordering a pizza on a phone call. They would rather go hungry than speak to a stranger,” he says. “Social media strips us of responsibility toward each other. It shows a world with no awkward pauses, no bad breath, just carefully curated texts and emojis.”

He adds that mixed signals between school and home only make matters worse.

“Schools ban phones, parents allow five to eight hours of social media at home. You cannot build healthy digital habits in that contradiction.”

Mockrish also flags a new concern. “Over 40 percent of students aged 11 to 16 now report having an AI companion, sometimes romantic. We are placing children’s emotional development into the care of something that does not think or feel. That should scare everyone.”

Why Policy Must Catch Up With Children

Meghna Bal, Director, Esya Centre, believes India’s regulatory lens is fundamentally misaligned.

“Children’s online well-being has been framed as a privacy issue rather than a child welfare issue,” she says. “Privacy is important, but it is not a silver bullet. Over-regulation can even shield bad actors by making harmful behaviour harder to detect.”

Instead, she argues for shifting focus from pure compliance to real-world emotional and social development.

“Children’s digital well-being begins at home, with parents and families, supported by schools and communities. Platforms matter, but long-term protection comes from media literacy, emotional resilience, and healthy relationships with technology.”

Cyber cruelty, she says, must be treated as both a social problem and a public policy concern.

“An all-of-society approach is the only way forward.”

The Future of Cyber Kindness

For Arjun, the mission remains simple. “There are many new things that keep coming, like roasting or AI comebacks. Whenever something new is created, we have to bring kindness into that too.” In a digital world racing ahead, an 11-year-old is helping shape the conversation by inviting voices from across fields to speak about kindness. Kindness, after all, is not something new. It is something we keep having to return to.