The fifth episode of 16 days activism by ‘Take Back the Tech Bangladesh’ was organized on December 3, 2020 and the discussed topic of the program was ‘Cyber harassments and the psychology of cyber criminals’. The guest of the program was Dr. Mekhla Sarkar, Associate Professor, National Institute of Mental Health and the program was hosted by Mahbuba Sultana, Coordinator, Take Back The Tech Bangladesh.

Dr. Mekhla Sarkar briefly discussed the psychology of cyber criminals and she also explained the different ranges of harassment a woman can face online. Dr. Mekhla Sarkar said, “from making a woman feel uncomfortable to making her feel extremely disgusted or threatened, will be considered as online harassment”. Ms Mahbuba Sultana asked Dr. Mekhla Sarkar about the psychological structure of those people who throw negative or even dirty questions to the woman online. Dr. Mekhla Sarkar replied that most of the harassment comes from the young aged people. Mostly people with inferiority complexes and people with lacking social skills suffer from this the most. She also said the family values and parenting structure also play an important role in this case. On ‘how to overcome such state or how to improve such state’, Dr. Mekhla Sarkar commented that if a person follows family values, social values, tries to learn about the depth of friendship and other related points, one can easily overcome this situation.

Ms. Mahbuba Sultana advised everyone that as the guardians of a family we should learn the proper way to treat the youngs of the family and if we are more careful and try understanding and improving our own behaviour, then these harassments can be declined by a large margin.