Research consistently identifies the consequences of bullying for the emotional health of
children and young people. Victims experience lack of acceptance in their peer groups, which
results in loneliness and social isolation. The young person’s consequent social withdrawal is
likely to lead to low self-esteem and depression.
Studies demonstrate that most young people who are cyberbullied are already being bullied by
traditional, face-to-face methods.6,21-23 Cyberbullying can extend into the target’s life at all
times of the day and night and there is evidence for additional risks to the targets of
cyberbullying, including damage to self-esteem, academic achievement and emotional
well-being.
(Helen Cowie,2013,Cyberbullying and its impact on young people’s emotional health and
well-being)
Cyber bullying can actually be worse that bullying,and it is a moral imperative for us as a nation
to seriously deal with this phenomenon as it can take a heavy toll on individuals-specially the
youth-and our society.
First of all,what makes cyberbullying worse is that there is to place to hide. For kids who get
bullied at school,bullying ends as soon as they’ve taken the ride home. But in cyber
bullying,even at home,with our 24/7 Internet connectivity, victims can see hateful words as long
as they are awake. You can say that they can simply deactivate their social media accounts but
in this age where the Internet means a lot of thing-from communicating with friends to playing
games-specially for young people,that mere act of having to deactivate one’s account is part of
the damage done.
Secondly,with cyberbullying,your being bullied is exposed to so many people,making the burden
of it even heavier.For obvious reasons,kids are embarrassed to tell their parents that they’re
being bullied in school. But in cyberbullying all the insults hurled at them are exposed to all their
social circles,never mind the general public. Surely it can get too much for any person,let alone
a teenegar like Villena(UP student who disrespected Duterte),to handle.
Finally.the nature of the Internet makes it much easier for people to say hurtful words-not just
because they are protected by anonymity and distance,but because they don't get to see the
emotional toll they inflict on the people they’re bullying. In school,if someone is already crying ad
screaming,the bullies will(usually) stop the punches. The problem with the Internet,however,is
not just that it has become so easy to hurt people,but that you don't even realize that you’re
hurting them.
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Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to present research exploring the pervasiveness and causes of cyberbullying, the
psychological impact on students, and the responses to cyberbullying from students and administrators. The goal is
to give school leaders a greater understanding of this phenomenon and suggest steps to deal with this challenging
issue.
Design/methodology/approach
– The data are collected from 351 students using a survey, which contains limited choice, scaled response, and
open-ended questions. This qualitative/quantitative design enables collection of data from a large population along
with rich qualitative data that expand and explain students' experiences.
Findings
– The paper reveals that cyberbullying emerges most commonly from relationship problems (break-ups, envy,
intolerance, and ganging up); victims experience powerfully negative effects (especially on their social well-being);
and the reactive behavior from schools and students is generally inappropriate, absent, or ineffective.
Research limitations/implications
– This is self-reported data collected from a group of students in one institution, who are asked to recall instances
from their pre-college experience. Additional research on from a variety of age groups and cross-culturally would add
another layer of understanding about cyberbullying among teens.
Practical implications
– Technological advances have created new challenges for schools in keeping students safe. This paper has
implications for educational policy and practice, including steps school leaders can take to curtail cyberbullying.
Originality/value
– This paper builds on a small body of research on cyberbullying and focuses on underlying causes, categories of
psychological effects, and specific remedies.
Most people know that bullying is wrong. Calling someone names has absolutely no beneficial
purpose. Moreover, hitting someone makes a bully feel good in the moment while doing
permanent damage to the person being victimized. With the Internet, people now have even
more opportunities to bully through cyberbullying. This includes sending crude pictures, posting
fake web pages, or tweeting slanderous messages. Cyberbullying has subsequently led to a
rise in a completely new kind of bullying.
One of the effects of bullying is that it can change the victim’s personality. It can cause people
who are normally confident and happy to become self-conscious, shy, and unsure. Additionally,
victims of bullying may also become sad or depressed. Their confidence might completely
disappear, keeping them from trying new things or trusting people. Once a person has been
bullied, they may hesitate to participate in situations where he or she might be ridiculed, such as
in public speaking or in sports. A bullying victim might even begin to possess previously absent
anxious
behavior.
Despite all the negative effects of bullying, there are even far more serious consequences.
People who have been bullied sometimes become so upset, scared, or depressed that they see
no worth in themselves and no way out of their torment. There have been countless reports over
the past few years of students committing suicide because they were bullied. Meanwhile, there
are times when victims see no recourse but to seek revenge by serious acts of violence against
the bully and instigators. As a result of bullying, people can lose their ability to love and trust,
denying them the chance to experience a quality relationship later in their life. They might find
themselves as a submissive partner or they may want to be completely alone. Compounding all
of these problems, victims often develop eating disorders, begin to self-injure, or require
extensive counseling. Social bullying can also leave people without a supportive group of
friends that they can lean on and spend time with.
Another unfortunate consequence of this is that bullying is often cyclical. People who have been
bullied can, in an attempt to gain their power and self-esteem back, become bullies themselves.
In relation to this, bullies who are not confronted or stopped may find themselves in future
positions where they can bully as adults. This is where manipulative bosses and child abusers
come from.
Aside from its long-term effects, some consequences of bullying can be seen and felt
immediately. When one child calls another child names, the victim might cry and a bruise might
appear after a punch to the arm. However, some effects of bullying are not always obvious to
the naked eye. The results of bullying might grow and appear over time, damaging a person in
profound ways for the long term. There are so many effects of bullying that they are impossible
to count or predict. This is why it is so important to stop bullying.
In its traditional sense, ‘bullying’ can be defined as an aggressive intentional and repeated behavior
of a group or an individual against a victim who cannot defend him or herself. Cyberbullying is an
aggressive and repeated behavior carried out online, using electronic forms of contact, such as mobile
phones, emails and social networks. Whereas cyberbullying can take many forms, major types of online
aggressive behavior are text messages, pictures and videos, phone calls, emails, instant messaging and
bullying via websites. The advent and wide spread of electronic communication technologies gave rise to
new forms of bullying, which take place in cyberspace but might have serious negative consequences for
victims in real life, leading even to isolation, suicides or serious psycho-social disorders. Whereas the
aggressive behaviors via electronic channels might seem milder, the implications of cyberbullying for the
victims can be as hard as the consequences of bullying in its traditional sense or even worse than that.
The availability of Internet and popularity of social networks along with the seeming anonymity of
interactions make cyberbullying the dominant bullying form among modern youths. According to the
findings of one of the recent studies conducted by Slonje and Smith (2007), 22% of students experienced
cyberbullying at least once (p. 148). At the same time, about 7% of students are continually cyberbullied
and they experience repetitive aggressive attacks. The responses of victims mainly depend upon their
peers’ awareness of the bullying incidents. Thus, a bullying incident known to more people is more
offensive than that known only to a victim. For this reason, in most cases victims tell only their best friends
about the unpleasant experiences of cyberbullying in which they were victims. Thus, parents and teachers
are often unaware of the bullying instances taking place in certain groups of students and thus, adults
cannot help students overcome their difficulties or interfere and try to influence the situation and the
behavior of all the participants of the conflict. In some cases (about 10%), students even decide not to tell
anyone about being bullied. Importantly, different forms of cyberbullying can result in different levels of
public awareness of the incident. For example, the bullying instances involving pictures and video clips
usually become known to about 43% of a class, whereas about 37% of people know about phone calls
and only29% of the group know of text messages. Taking into account the fact that there’s a direct
relationship between the level of awareness of a particular incident and the victim’s perception and
response to it, it can be stated that the intention to conceal cyberbullying cases is one of the coping
strategies aimed at neutralizing the possible aftermath and consequences of victimization.
Along with the differences in awareness levels and implications of different forms of cyberbullying, the
responses to cyberbullying in different individuals can vary, depending on their age, gender and other
psychosocial characteristics. Thus, Snell and Englander (2010) stated that girls are more often get
involved in cyberbullying, both as victims and actual bullies, whereas boys more often take part in
physical bullying (p. 510). The main explanation for this difference is that in most cases females prefer
indirect relational aggression, whereas males choose physical aggression often taking the form of fights.
The major types of relational bullying chosen by girls can be successfully carried out online. The main
manipulative strategies include gossiping, spreading rumors, betrayals or excluding victims, depriving
them of the feel of belonging. The cyberbullying can take the form of threats, harassing or humiliation on
the basis of appearance, ethnic or psycho-social characteristics. Thus, girls can be attacked for not
complying with the generally accepted beauty standards or for not belonging to certain social groups and
not being involved in popular social activities. Whereas bullies can easily find an excuse for attacking their
peer, too shy, introvert and overweight individuals are most likely to become victims of bullying attacks.
Therefore, the individual peculiarities which previously could make students objects of traditional bullying
have now been transferred to cyberspace, making some individuals victims of aggressive attacks and
revealing the overall lack of tolerance and empathy in modern community.
Even taking place online, cyberbullying may have serious consequences for its victims in the real
world. Thus, continuous attacks and repetitive abuses may influence an individual’s self-perception,
self-esteem and overall psychological wellbeing. In some cases, the abusive messages may have almost
hypnotic effect on a person. A skinny girl, who is constantly called fat, can end up believing this claim and
distorting her own body image under the influence of someone whose only goal is to have fun and boost
their own self-esteem. Along with the unhealthy messages sent by mass media and beauty industry,
cyberbullying attacks distort self-perception of modern females, having a negative impact on their eating
habits and relations with others (Willard, 2007, p. 28). Anorexia nervosa and bulimia are extreme but
widely spread consequences of distorted body image and cyberbullying. Therefore, repetitive aggressive
attacks can have long-lasting effects on personal development and psycho-social well-being of a victim.
Consequently, the new form of bullying taking place in the cyberspace requires further research and
measures for increasing the students’ awareness of the potential threats of Internet use and the most
effective coping strategies.
Cyberbullying is an important problem of modern education system. Taking place in cyberspace,
these repetitive aggressive actions often become known to large groups of students, whereas there’s a
direct link between the number of people who are aware of bullying and the victimization process. Even
though girls are more likely to be involved in cyberbullying than boys, the victimization as a result of
aggressive attacks in the form of offensive pictures, video clips, text messages or phone calls can have
serious negative consequences for the psycho-social wellbeing of both male and female students.
**
Between cell phones, social media websites, and online gaming, children today seem to have more
outlets for interacting with each other virtually than they do for interacting with each other in person.
However, with all of the good social interaction that is done as a result of these technologies also comes
the bad. In addition to the physical and verbal bullying that may take place at school, cyber-bullying in the
form of harassing text messages and derogatory posts on children’s Facebook or Twitter accounts is now
commonplace. Even though it may not take place in person, the emotional and psychological effects of
cyber-bullying are just as destructive. Since new media and cell phones are harder to track and monitor,
parents need to take preventive measures that can help minimize the effects of cyber-bullying on their
children.
How Bullying Affects Kids
“Kids that are bullied are likely to experience anxiety, depression, loneliness, unhappiness, and poor
sleep,” explains Jennifer N. Caudle, DO, an AOA board-certified family physician in Philadelphia. Making
the issue worse is the fact that such negative effects of bullying often go unnoticed, as many victims feel
the need to conceal the fact that they are being bullied because they are embarrassed or afraid of further
bullying. More often than not victims respond passively to bullying. They tend to act anxious and appear
less confident. They may become quieter in class and, as a result, the bullying can become a hindrance
on their academic success. Therefore, bullying is a problem that, if left unattended, can become a
significant hurdle in a child’s development.
Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine, or DOs, look beyond your symptoms to understand how lifestyle and
environmental factors affect your wellbeing. They listen and partner with you to help you get healthy and
stay well. They also encourage your body’s natural tendency toward self-healing.
Connecting With Kids Online
Yet while the victim might be passive, it is imperative that the parent is not. According to Dr. Caudle, in
order to prevent cyber-bullying, parents must be actively involved in their children’s cyber lives.
“Communication with one’s children is the key to bully prevention,” says Dr. Caudle. So send them a
friend request on Facebook. Play some XBOX Live—or another system with online gaming—with them.
Parents who are proactively involved with their children’s interactions online are subsequently able to
monitor these interactions more closely. Therefore, such parents will be exponentially more informed with
regard to what bullies, if any, exist in their children’s lives, both online and off.
Creating Safe Spaces
Dr. Caudle advises that, in addition to interacting more with their children, parents should also take the
necessary preventive measures to create safe places for their children to get away from cyber-bullying.
“The home should be a safe place where open discussion is not only allowed, but invited,” says Dr.
Caudle. Parental supervision and involvement in a child’s social interactions allows for a sense of comfort
and protection from bullying.
Dr. Caudle also notes that one must not forget about the bullies themselves. Often, bullying is a cry for
help and can usually be traced to a time when the bully was in fact a victim of this type of behavior. Thus,
creating a safe environment where one’s child feels comfortable enough to talk about being bullied can
help put a stop to bullying before it ever starts.
****
http://www.stopcyberbullying.org/what_is_cyberbullying_exactly.html
Cyberbullying is usually not a one time communication, unless it involves a death threat or a credible
threat of serious bodily harm. Kids usually know it when they see it, while parents may be more worried
about the lewd language used by the kids than the hurtful effect of rude and embarrassing posts.
Cyberbullying may rise to the level of a misdemeanor cyberharassment charge, or if the child is young
enough may result in the charge of juvenile delinquency. Most of the time the cyberbullying does not go
that far, although parents often try and pursue criminal charges. It typically can result in a child losing their
ISP or IM accounts as a terms of service violation. And in some cases, if hacking or password and identity
theft is involved, can be a serious criminal matter under state and federal law.
**
