Cyberbullying: Overview and Description
The internet, a place where people from across the world can socialize easily. A place where people can post whatever they want. A place where people can express their feeling to the world. Some say it’s a beautiful place, but some say it’s a very scary place. Even though it can be a good experience, but something terrible is waiting behind it.
In this part of the generation, the internet is considered as a big part of the world, because most of the world’s population uses the internet to do everything.
People can talk to each other, send messages, find information, study, play games together and many more. All of this only requires either a laptop or a phone with an internet connection, with that you can connect to other people in the world.
While the internet can be a good impact to the world, it gives a bad impact to some of people in a part of the world.
The internet encourages people to hurt another person through text message or social media. This can be considered as a cyber case.
Many cyber cases happen every day, there might be one happening now. One of the cyber cases is called “Cyberbullying”, this case happens very often in the internet. This is one of the most common way of bullying a person.
According to the dictionary, cyberbullying is “the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature”. This means that cyberbullying involves the use of electronic communication to hurt someone’s feeling.
According to Stop Bullying website, “Cyberbullying is bullying that takes place over digital devices like cell phones, computers, and tablets. Cyberbullying can occur through SMS, Text, and apps, or online in social media, forums, or gaming where people can view, participate in, or share content”. This means that cyberbullying takes place over a digital device through SMS, text or social media where people can see, participate and share the content. They also stated that “Cyberbullying includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else. It can include sharing personal or private information about someone else causing embarrassment or humiliation. Some cyberbullying crosses the line into unlawful or criminal behavior”. This means that there are methods of cyberbullying such as sending, posting or sharing personal, negative, false or harmful content. This case can cross the line and it can be considered as a criminal behavior.
According to Common Sense Media, “Cyberbullying is the use of digital-communication tools (such as the Internet and cell phones) to make another person feel angry, sad, or scared, usually again and again”. This means that people cyberbully to make another person feel angry, sad or scared repeatedly.
In conclusion, Cyberbullying is bullying that involves the use of electronic devices in order to hurt another person’s feeling through social media. A person can be cyberbullying by sending, posting or sharing personal, negative, false or harmful content online. Cyberbullying happens through SMS, text, or social media where it can be seen, participated, and shared by people. Cyberbullying should be a felony, because it has pushed tons of people to self-harm and committing suicide. Just like bullying, cyber bullying have the same concept.
For example, Ruby Astari was a High School student from Indonesia who got abused by her classmates, teacher and a gym instructor. They were abusing about her ‘chubby’ figure, leaving her was very depressed. She had experienced bullying throughout her teens and adult-life. She even wished that she would get ran over by a car passing down the street. Being a teenager, Astari experienced severe depression and began having suicidal thoughts. This is a case of bullying, cyberbullying have the same concept of abusing.
Cyberbullying have always been there since the start of social media. Cyberbullying have pushed people to hurt themselves, having suicide thoughts and even committing it. Cyberbullying can be considered as a felony for causing multiple cases of suicide. Not only the victim of cyberbullying is affected, his/her friends and relatives will be worried about the victim. The internet has always caused chaos since it started, cyberbullying is one of it. It needs to be stopped as soon as possible. We can’t risk another life to lose through cyberbullying.
Cyberbullying happens a lot nowadays. Justin W. Patchin stated that “72% of students have been cyberbullied while another published study puts the number at 5.5%”. This means that there are a lot of students from all across the world who have been cyberbullied.
At the 2nd December of 2016, an 18-year-old teenager committed suicide due to cyberbullying she was involved. CBS News stated that “Brandy Vela’s family says cyberbullying pushed the 18-year-old over the edge, leading her to shoot herself in the chest Tuesday afternoon at the family’s Texas City home as family members watched”. Her father tried to cover up this case saying “she had been receiving abusive text messages for months from bullies using an untraceable smartphone application. Her father said someone made a fake Facebook page of her, creating another cyberbullying medium”. Her sister Jacquelina Vela stated that “They would make dating websites of her, and they would put her number and they would put her picture (on the sites), and lie about her age and say she is giving herself up for sex for free, to call her”. Brandy Vela tried to change her number, but eventually the bullies found her. The bullies were focusing on making fun of Brandy’s weight online. The father said that he hopes for a stricter law against cyberbullying and greater awareness to give some meanings to his daughter.
Mallory, a sixth grader at Copeland who took her own life on June 14th, 2017. She was being relentlessly harassed online by her own classmate. The father of the victim stated that “Mallory’s life tragically ended when her own classmates used this cellphone to drive her into this tragedy, for months there were texts, Snapchat and Instagram she was told she was a loser, she had no friends. She was even told, ‘why don’t you kill yourself’.” The father of the victim ended up suing Mallory’s school which is Rockaway Township School.
Nowadays, humans are living in a world where people bully and get bullied. “Cyber bullying happens for many of the same reasons as any other type of bullying, but it may be even more appealing because it can be done anonymously” by Anonymous. Grace Gabriel stated that “there are two kinds of people who are likely to bully; the socially active people and the socially inactive people. It is said that bullying results in an upgrade of confidence, thinking the control is on the hands of the bully as it is also the main reason of why socially active people may bully other people; it makes them feel powerful as it is also a way to maintain their popularity.” This means that there are two types of people who are most likely to bully, which is the socially active people and socially inactive people. “Some individuals would bully only to boost their egos. These individuals simply harass others to entertain themselves. Attention is what some people want. There is a chance they did not gain it from their family, some are suffering from a family conflict”.
In conclusion, there are two types of person that would bully other people. The first type is socially active person. This type of person is usually active and like to socialize with other people. They bully because they want to get popularity. The second type is socially inactive person. This type of person usually don’t like to talk to others and they cant get along with other people easily. They find it hard get along with others and make friends. They bully others only to boost their own ego. They abuse and hurt other people’s feeling online in order to entertain themselves. There are individuals that wants all the attention to their selves. They get it by bullying people online. When this type of cyberbully happens, they usually become the topic of everyone’s conversation. Some people want all the attention because they didn’t get any attention from their family. Some people are suffering from their own family conflicts.
Cyberbullying have always gotten out of hand. It had always crossed the line for the victims. Those victims pushed their selves to do something to their own body. Those things can be very bad for the victims. They usually hurt themselves because they felt very guilty even though they are not.
Cyberbullying can cause more depression for the victim. When a victim gets abused or bullied by a person online, other people can see it. Just imagine that there are more than a million other people accessing the internet in the same moment that you are. It is visible to other people. Social medias such as Instagram, twitter, facebook can be seen by a numerous amount of people online. Not only they can see the content, they can participate and share it to other people. When people share the content of the bullying online, they can be the topic of everyone’s conversation. When it is a rumor of something negative of the victim, the victim may get depressed and possibly a suicidal thought that can lead to committing it.
There are other big cases of cyberbullying online. This takes place at 26th May 2013. “Effort Creative music promoter, Bobby Yoga Cahyadi, died tragically after being hit by the Sri Tanjung train in the east of the Gowok hamlet, Caturtunggal Village, Depok, Sleman, Yogyakarta, Sunday around 08.00/2013 . It is strongly suspected that Bobby committed suicide due to severe depression”. Yoga failed to organize a concert. “Initially the music festival and concert will be attended by 120 bands but eventually only around 60 bands appear. In addition, of the 10 national bands scheduled to perform, only one band finally agreed to perform. Not only that, the entry ticket which was initially targeted to sell 5,000 sheets a day turned out to only sell around 1,000 tickets”. Yoga ended up being cyberbullied at twitter leaving him heavily depressed. With all his depression, he decided to take his own life by walking into the train tracks and getting ran over by the train.
Cyberbullying have made a huge change to the world. People look at it very harmful. It can break someone’s heart easily. In order to stop it, we need a solution that can affect the internet.
First solution, if you are being cyberbullied by someone online, you can just tell someone you trust about it. This can be very effective because people can talk down to their friends and relatives about what their dealing with.
Second solution, when you are being cyberbullied by someone online, you need to keep everything you dealt with. You can record it or screenshot it. When this becomes investigated, we can send everything we have dealt with.
Third solution, normally, cyberbullies who abuses the victim, the cyberbully always start the conversation. So, we don’t need to engage anything with the person. We should ignore the person.
In order to prevent cyberbullying, we should start a campaign that explains what cyberbullying is, signs you’re being cyberbullied and all about cyberbullying, but the most important part is the ethics of using the internet. With that in mind, people will be more aware of the usage of the internet. People can help other people who are dealing with it. In that way, people can prevent experiencing depression and suicidal thought.
In conclusion, cyberbullying is a bully that takes place in the internet where everybody who is accessing the internet can see it. Cyberbullying can happen through SMS, text, social media and more. Other people in the internet can see, participate and share the content. Cyberbullying can be very harmful because it already give a lot of bad impacts to the internet. Many people have been heart broken or depressed and even taking their own life because of cyberbullying. This means that cyberbullying needs to be stopped as soon as possible. A way to do it is by telling someone about the problem, keep track of everything you’ve dealt with and not engaging or ignoring the person. Another way to do it is by spreading awareness to the internet about the importance of ethics in the usage of internet.
Bibliography
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- Cbs/ap. “Cyberbullying Pushed Texas Teen to Commit Suicide, Family Says.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 7 Feb. 2017, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cyberbullying-pushed-texas-teen-commit-suicide-family/.
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- “The Indonesians Driven to Depression and Worse by Bullying.” South China Morning Post, 20 July 2018, https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/families/article/2116561/bullying-indonesias-schools-rife-and-becoming-more-violent-we.
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