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IRONICALLY, when some parents find out their children have been engaged in activities that aren't age appropriate on social media, they choose to punish them via the same media. This may include posting a video on their children's social media accounts of them being reprimanded or scolded, many of which have been deemed to be abusive.But Lieutenant Colonel Godphey Sterling, head of the Jamaica Cyber Incident Response Team within the Ministry of Science, Energy and Technology, told the Jamaica Observer that though inappropriate and uncouth, these types of postings by parents are not considered cybercrime."The manner in which we use technology oftentimes does not meet the threshold of a crime, however, it is not what you would call responsible behaviour [either] in terms of the use of the technology or in cyberspace. The issue we face a lot of times, with parents and their children and posting things online, is sometimes...really a cry for help," he said."It is really them saying to a social media group or following: 'How do I address this? How can I make a change? How can I do something differently?' And so, what we try to do in cases like that where our help is sought, is to walk them through how to not push everything to the general social media population but to actually reach out to specific groups including the CPFSA [Child Protection and Family Services Agency] to get that sort of one-on-one help if it is needed, in an effort to ensure that you can try to manage the situation without making it very public."Deputy Superintendent Warren Williams, head of the Communication Forensics and Cybercrimes division at the JCF, told the Sunday Observer that an increase in malicious communication online has been recorded."Our tagline is: 'The more we educate, the less we have to investigate.' There is one provision in the Cybercrimes Act of 2015, which is now being revised, which is using a computer for malicious communication. So, your smart device, your tablet is classified as computers so if you use it for malicious communication - anything that is threatening, anything that is obscene - once it falls into any of these three categories then it becomes a criminal offence. Some of them do not fall into the threshold of criminal," he explained.Williams said he believes that more needs to be done in terms of public awareness and education."We seem to only capitalise on special timing, like an Internet week or cyber security month in October. I think it needs to be continuous. Flow has the capacity and the resources... they could put it on billboards, push it through their text messaging with cyber security tips and educational tips, because persons are constantly online."I don't want to make you be aware for just a week or for a month. We're human beings; if it is not pushed into our face continuously we're going to forget it, or we don't pay attention to it. So, to seriously address this issue we need a consistent awareness and public education [during] the 12 months of the year."Williams added that companies like Flow, and probably their counterpart and other institutions, "can get on board to push this because, as we're seeing, every sector of society now depends on technology and, of course, we are expecting a great increase in terms of cybercrimes" .However, Kayon Mitchell, director of communications and stakeholder engagement at Flow, said the communications and technology company has various programmes through their Flow Foundation which foster digital education initiatives."The foundation has training programmes that are free and open to Jamaicans. In fact, we have over 4,000 Jamaicans currently involved and going through a training programme through the Mona School of Business, and one of the courses in that programme covers being safe online. Additionally, we have courses on cyber security, Internet safety, information safety also available through our other training programme," she said.Mitchell, also executive director of Flow Foundation, added: "There are things we are doing behind the scenes but we do take the point for a lot more visibility for some of these public education initiatives and for the consistent dialogue in the public space around being safe online."