Cyberbullying by Evann Specht

Cyberbullying is defined as the willful and repeated harm inflicted through phones and computers. In other words, cyberbullying is mediated bullying. The degree of severity ranges from teasing texts to harassing blogs and sites. Unfortunately, in the last decade or so, as the use of technology rapidly increases, so did the amount of cyberbullying cases.

            In the article, “When Bullying Goes High-tech” by Elizabeth Landau, she references researcher, Justin W. Patchin; he reported as many as 25% of adolescences have encountered instances of cyberbullying at some point. Patchin along with other colleagues studied 15,000 high school and middle school students throughout the United States and gained shocking results that reported more then 10% of those surveyed had been victims of cyberbullying in the last month.

            Cyberbullying has many commonalities with traditional bullying in school, sports teams, etc. Both behaviors include: humiliation, harassment, teasing, aggression, a victim and a predator. Online bullying poses unique challenges as it  allows the perpetrator to potentially go anonymous and attacks can happen at any time of the day/night. Often times people find that anonymity and the ability to not have to face the person face to face and hide behind the computer screen enables the attacker to say more harmful, demeaning and twisted things they might not normally say if they had to face the person they were attacking. Justin Patchin makes the claim in the CNN article that “technology isn’t necessarily creating a new class of bullies”, implying that often times those who bully inside the classroom or on the sports team etc. are also the ones who are most likely taking their negative, hurtful behavior online.

            Depending on the severity of the behaviors and bullying, lasting

consequences can vary for both the victim and bully. Both people in the situation can suffer from generalized anxiety and panic disorder, discomfort in public or around their families, forms of depression, thoughts or attempts of suicide and self-harm etc. Although cyberbullying has a digital footprint, since it is mediated online or via text, it is complicated to prove or take significant measures against the bullying and many times goes unreported by victims. Actions like disemvowling degrading and inappropriate posts on social media sites or blog sites have been attempted to be implemented in order to make the cruel messages less powerful, but the messages were still clear to others and it is hard to monitor posts and give sites the access to edit posts of their users.

I believe there needs to be a more focused conversation on teaching our teenagers between appropriate online behavior and damaging online behavior and how their actions can significantly affect others lives and well being as well as their own. We should also begin to deeply think and create innovative and affective ways to potentially limit the amount of online bullying instances and combat the odds of cyberbullying happening, even if the use of our technology is increasing only making it more likely to happen. Instilling confidence in victims of cyberbullying to bring their situation to an adult’s attention is a necessity, before harmful actions or words are taken to far.