Laura Chidichimo March
14, 2012
Professor Diane Fischer Senior Seminar
Cyber Bullying
Bullying has been going on for generations, however now
the latest technology is being utilized.
Cyber bullying is when a child, teen or preteen is tormented,
threatened, harassed, humiliated or embarrassed in another way, targeted by
another child, teen or preteen using the internet, interactive and digital
technologies or mobile phones. There
must be a minor involved on either one or both sides, since once adults are
involved; it becomes cyber harassment or cyber stalking. Adult cyber harassment is not called cyber
bullying. Cyber bullying is the willful
and repeated harm inflicted through technology.
There are two types of cyber bullying, including; direct attacks which
is a message being sent directly to the kid, or cyber bullying by proxy which
uses others to help bully the victim.
Cyber bullying is often motivated by anger, revenge or
frustration. Sometimes, entertainment
while bored or just to receive a reaction from someone can be a cause as
well. Rarely, this can be an accident
that maybe someone accidentally sends a message and does not realize what they
are doing. The power-hungry people do it
to torment and feed their ego. Since the
motives of the perpetrators differ, the solutions and responses for each
individual incident differ as well.
There is no exact way to prevent any kind of bullying,
let alone cyber bullying. The only thing
that can be done is to educate students about consequences. Students should be taught to respect others
and to take a stand about watching someone else be a bully or be bullied. Students should be more sensitive to the pain
and harm they may be causing others and by standers should be just as guilty as
the perpetrators for seeing what they are doing and not saying anything. I believe the punishments for such behavior
should be more severe and strict than they are known to be. If the cyber bullying takes places out of
school, I think an arrest should take place and if it happens in school, an
arrest and a suspension should follow up.
Sometimes when schools try to get involved with outside occurrences,
they are often times sued for exceeding their authority and violating a
student’s freedom of speech.
The outcomes of the victims of cyber bullying range from
moderate to severe. Victims may feel
depressed, sad, angry and frustrated.
They may also become afraid and/or embarrassed to go to school depending
on the publicity of the situation. There
has been a link found between cyber bullying and low self-esteem, family
problems, academic problems, school violence and delinquent behaviors. Cyber bullied youth also reported having
suicidal thoughts. According to the law,
the only difference between cyber bullying and cyber harassment is the age of
the perpetrator and victim. Cyber
bullying has several different kind of threats including; lewd language,
insulting the child directly, threatening the child vaguely, threatening the
child with bodily harm, general serious threat, and threatening by death. The frequency also plays a factor depending
on if it happened one time, repeatedly, increasing and if their parties are
joining in. The source matters as well;
does the victim know who it is, do they think they know who it is, do they have
no idea or is it several people?
As you can see, there is much more
to cyber bullying than just a threat using technology. I think this matter needs to be taken very
seriously and the punishments should be more severe, with hopes of one day
preventing all bullying. Unfortunately,
children who have experienced this may have lasting feelings of depression and
embarrassment. I remember when I was in
high school; I was bullied through instant messaging over the computer by a couple
of girls who were all friends. I used to
cry to my mother and her only solution was to stay off the computer. Being this was about 7 years ago; I don’t
think parents were aware that the matter needed to be taken into authorities
hands. I dreaded going to school almost
every day and these particular girls ruined my senior year of high school by
making sure I did not have a limo to prom nor a date either. I am thankful that the situation never
progressed into serious bodily harm, however these girls chased me with their
car for about 30 minutes one day, and I had to call the police. They were released and the bullying
continued. I think this is unacceptable
how they ran me off the road with a vehicle and nothing was done about it. Students need to be made aware that such
behavior is unacceptable and in schools, there should be zero tolerance for
cyber bullying.
No comments:
Post a Comment