Cyber bullying has become a more popular way to attack peers. Before social media, bullying would take place in the locker room, cafeteria, or a classroom. Bullying is based on the imbalance of power between the bully and the victim. Typically, the reason a person would bully is due to having personal issues of their own and they want to make someone else feel the same quilt or sadness that they feel.
Cyber bullying could be posting inappropriate pictures of someone else, making abusive comments, writing a vulgar email, or even talking to down to someone on an online game, such as x-box live. The difference between cyber bullying and face-to-face bullying is that it is often hard to escape. The victim cannot just walk away if someone post a video. Also, it is often difficult to punish the bully compared to if this happened in a school setting.
Cyber bullying has an impactful effect on the victim, and this could even be detrimental. Is cyber bullying worse than traditional bullying? What can be done to put a stop to cyber bulling? Bullying, weather it is traditional or cyber, causes both emotional and psychological issues. This could lead to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and even suicide. Cyber bullying is a form of harassment and harder to put a stop to than traditional bullying due to the major increase in technology and how it can be taken advantage of.
Cyber bullying can take place over cell phones, tablets, gaming consoles, and computers.
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The most common place where cyber bullying could take place are social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram. Text messages and even instant message, such as Facebook or Instagram message are often places where bullying is common, as well. Cyber bullying can harm the reputation of everyone who is involved, not just the victim. When being bullied over the web, it could be hard to notice because adults may not hear or see the action taking place. It is also harder to have things remove once being posted or sent on the internet. Most information that is posted or shared is often permanent and public, if not reported and removed.
Anything negative being posted on a public forum, could impact the Childs future, such as college or jobs. (gov) It’s often questioned why this happens and now, why it happens more often than traditional bullying. As social media becomes more popular, and kids are starting to get it at a younger age, social attention is more desired. This seems to be the root to the cause. This occurs on both the person bullying and the victim. When being active on any type of social media or technology, the chance of becoming a victim is always available to happen.
Some believe that cyber bullying is less harmful than traditional bullying. Traditional bullies are only able to act on their victim when seeing them in person. This is mostly confined to school and places that are interacted face to face with peers. Cyber bullies can bully others any time, as cell phones and computers are both at home and at school. Cell phones usage is being a more tolerable allowance during school hours. Traditional bullies are not able to bully their victims while at home, but with cyber bullies, home is usually where bullying occurs because they are unable to be seen and often not able to be stopped. This leaves no safe place for the targets of bullying to go.
Cyber bullying is not as easy to stop as traditional bullying because hurtful comments posted on social media are not able to be stopped or deleted by the victim, and this is left for many other people to see, and often teens chime in on the bullying. When stopping a traditional bully, it can be relativity easy with the right measures taken, especially if taken at a early stage of the bullying cycle. A study from University of Calgary, preformed in 2005, reported that 54 percent of students have been bullied and, of those, a quarter of those students were cyber bulled. The study found that majority of the victims that were cyber bullied, did not report this. (Penn)
Although, little research has been available on the traits of cyber bullies and victims, some insight is available from recent U.S. studies. Compared to the general student population, cyber bullies are more likely to have been targets on- or offline, to have acted delinquently and used drugs, and to receive less monitoring from their parents. Half of the victims had above-average grades, while less than 35 percent of the cyber bullies’ school grades were average. (Penn)
