Cyberbullying and Youth
Written by Robert Wu
With advancement in technology in today’s era (2000’s) there has been a whole new world awaiting new users, through the use of the Internet and Telecommunications. Such examples can be: mobile phones, instant messaging (eg. MSN), emailing, blogs, forums, social networking & so forth. Abuse of such technology can potentially endanger today’s generation.
Cyber Bullying is a common problem which can potentially affect anyone using the Internet; at home as teenagers come home from school and start browsing the Internet, or an employer who rushes to work and turns on the computer to check his/her email.
Cyber Bullying is known as the abuse/harrassment/threat made through the Internet or telecommunication tool.
Such a situation can take place through, for example, social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, and Tagged.
The following story is a fictionalised account of cyber-bullying:
Tony and James do not know each other. James stumbles across Tony’s Myspace one evening. He then browses through his photos and reads his profile description, and upon boredom James posts an article on his blog regarding his recent stumbling upon the “Most Ugly Person he has ever seen”. Upon posting on the blog he also comments on Tony’s MySpace, with comments like “you are so ugly” and links to his blog post.
Tony logs onto his myspace the next day and reads through his comments, including the comments James made before. He browses on the blog, and stumbles across photos and comments that James made about him.
Potentially What can happen? I think we all know the answer: In retaliation, the exchange of violent words will be made.
Why do people do these kind of acts you may ask yourself? They may do it for the sake of humour, bordome, high ego, pleasure & so forth.
With such an issue it can potentially affect the victim socially (how you react to your peers); mentially (how you think and future made decisions) and physically (as what you might do to your body).
With such a situation you may wonder what will be the best way to resolve this issue. You may alternatively send a message to the cyber-bully and sort out the situation politely, or just don’t respond and block the bully. If further action is needed, contact a counsellor or the Police regarding the bullying.
Interesting fact:
Facebragging – To use Facebook as a platform to brag. Normally about a job, internship, trip, purchase or anything else that nobody really needs to know but you’d like to tell everyone because you’re awesome.
