Cyberbullying as defined by our lecture is a series of "willful and repeated harm inflicted through phones and computers”. Modern technology such as Internet definitely has made our life so much simpler and more convenient in many ways, but on the contrary it also leads to many social problems and raised many ethical concerns. Cyberbullying is definitely one of the most negative Internet-related social issue that deserve our attention. The web 2.0 technology allows open user interaction and adopts user generated contents; taking the traditional optimistic perspective, web 2.0 technology embraces the idea of free speech and thus contribute to democracy of our society. However, the anonymous nature and the openness of Internet can also yield detrimental outcomes such as cyberbullying. In general, people tend to be less responsible and also less considerate of their speech online than they are offline because everyone remains anonymous on the Internet. Even if you say something really bad about the others, chances are you will never be accused of your comments in reality. Moreover, priming effect in media study suggests that exposure to one stimulus can implicitly affect people’s perception to make them give similar responses that resemble the stimulus that they previously seen. This effect can be extremely harmful when it comes to public forum: when one people start to behave aggressively, the rest of the people tend to do the same, and this bandwagon effect contribute greatly to cyberbullying. Additionally, for many people, the Internet is a way for them to escape the pain in reality so they behave aggressively online as a means of catharsis.
Cyberbullying is pervasive in modern society, especially in teenager community. In Japan, cyberbullying and the negative effects of media on teenagers have always been two of the most important social issue for sociologists and government to discuss. Kubota (2008) suggested in his report “Cyber bullying common in Japan school Web sites” that the popularity of Japanese middle and high school websites and discussion forums have offered ground for the prosperity of cyberbullying. The types of online harassment ranged from sexual content to violent slangs, and there have been many incidents surrounding cyberbullying going on now in Japan. There were many Japanese fictional works that centered the issue of cyberbullying such as “Maidens” by Kanae Minato, which depicted the story about a girl who suffered cyberbullies from her schoolmates and ended up committing suicide. Kubota (2008) also indicated that despite that most students reported that they have posted messages on their school websites, the majority of the contents that appear the sites are actually hateful and unfriendly. What’s more, up to 10% of the Japanese students reported that they have at least once been the victims of cyberbullying. Kubota (2008) manifested that government, parents, as well as school authorities must find themselves responsible to improve the overall atmosphere of the school forums.
Given the information above, the severity and the universality of cyberbullying have been determined and I believe the key to this problem is that humanities’ moral standards are not evolving as fast as our technology is. Internet allows us to "conveniently" communicate with others, but also allows us to "conveniently" bully others - it's all up to our choice! The anonymity and convenience of the Internet improves our lifestyles but ironically also hurt many of us, especially for the juveniles - they don't have ideas about what roles they are playing online, so sometimes they blindly follow others just for fun or just to relieve their unfavorable feelings toward the people that they dislike. Even though offline bullying also happens often in reality, an important question for us to consider here would be: if a person choose not to harm others in the reality, why would he/she choose to do so on the Internet? Why would somebody friendly in reality behave hostile online? Only if everyone starts to assume their responsibilities as a user in online community can we resolve the issue of cyberbullying. Internet as a medium is not to blame, but our moral values and sense of responsibility.
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