By Astrid Beato
Cyber bullying is any harassment that occurs via the
Internet. It can be a variety of posting fake profiles on web sites, vicious
form of posts, name calling in chat rooms, and mean, cruel and threatening
email messages are all ways of cyber bullying.
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Teenagers now-a-days spend a lot of time on the Internet. It’s
either on instant messenger chat, uploading photos, videos, etc. They may also
have online friends that maybe they’ve never met in person to play online games
and exchange messages. Therefore the Internet is an easy way for anyone to be a
victim of cyber bullying, especially teenagers. Cyber bullies either pretending they are different
people from themselves to spread lies and rumors, send or forward mean messages,
post pictures of their victims without their consent or trick other people into
revealing personal information to send out to the public.According to cyber
bullying statistics from the i-SAFE foundation: over half of adolescents and teens have been bullied online, and about the same number are cyber bullying.1 in 3 teens have experienced cyber threats online and also over half of young people do not tell their parents when they are being cyber bullied.
On the good side,
there are ways for cyberbully victims to react; the victims can either block
complete communication with the cyberbully, deleting the messages without
reading them, talking to a friend or reporting the problem to the Internet
service provider. Also the victims can save all the communication and harassment
of them being bullied as evidence and talk to a trustworthy adult, law
enforcement and or parent to find and stop the cyberbulling. So if anyone knows
a person that is a victim of cyber bulling or maybe yourself seek help you’re
not the only one.
Here is a link of some stories of other people being cyber bullied, http://familyinternet.about.com/u/ua/computingsafetyprivacy/Cyberbullyua.htm
Here is also a short video of Sophie's story.
I've seen a lot of cyber bullying on Facebook before I deleted my account. Especially one girl from my high school,she always had these problems. People made fake accounts pretending to be her, and tagged her in animal pictures. But I think if you're a victim of cyber bullying you shouldn't let anyone get to you. Everyone is going to think different things about you, some people will like you and some will not. They're doing this through the internet cause they don't have the guts to say things to your face, so you already know you're better than them. Also, as for the video I think that was her fault you dont send naked pictures to people! It was her mistake that she learned from. But I know many random girls who send my guy friends naked pictures of themselves for no reason, it's becoming "normal" to young people.
ReplyDeleteGood job on your blog :) very interesting
Cyber bullying has no picks and no limitations to who's targeted (attractive, unattractive, popular, unpopular, famous, unfamous, disabled, etc.) I've witnessed first hand the effects of a friend being cyber bullied through making the wrong choice to send someone an x rated photo of herself. Once the social networking site Twitter got a hold of it, things just spiraled down hill for her, it forced her to close down her account,limit places she went to hang out, she was publicly humilliated by random people who saw the photo's, they didn't know her and she didn't know them, all they went by is the image that photo portrayed. Cyber bullying has been displayed all over the news like In Vermont two children, fifteen-year-old Phoebe Prince and eleven-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover took their own lives after unrelenting bullying pushed them over the edge. Ryan Halligan took his own life in October of 2003 when a rumor about him spread across the Web. One of the highest profile cases of cyber bullying was a Missouri teen, Megan Meier who was driven to suicide after taunts and humiliation from her classmate's (Mother). She hung herself weeks before her 14th birthday after being cyber bullied via the social network MySpace. It's bad enough we have to worry about children bullying other children, but when you have parents contributing to this maliscous act,it's really a huge problem that needs serious addressing. I appreciate you posting this blog to make others aware of the overlooked form of bullying (cyber bullying). When parents/children understand that this is not an act of kids just being kids or a part of growing up,and acknowledge there are serious consequences and reprocussions to any form of bullying it will contribute greatly towards ending this epidemic. Good job on your topic choice Astrid!!
ReplyDeleteThe video was such a stong complement to your entire blog post. The sad thing is, yes adults should no better , but they make the choice to do these type of things anyway. So in my opinion they get what they ask for. Aside from that, children are victimized on an everyday basis from schoolmates, or even strangers who takes advantages of them once they be-friend them. Cyber-bullying is becoming more aware of, especially to parents who at one time was naive to the things their children where getting involved in through the Internet.
ReplyDeleteI agree, bulling back in the day used to be more simple. There were more ways of detecting it. Nowadays with cyber bulling you could never know your child was being hurt. Some people don't know about facebook, and myspace where most of the bulling happens.
ReplyDelete