The Continuous Cycle of Cyber Bullying

Introduction

The internet plays a huge role in our lives, it is used to let us do and access things easily. The internet is created to help us do our daily tasks, like searching for information, an address, search for books, or even reaching out to people who aren’t near your area. There are many positive usages of the internet, yet it is taking over our lives. Most people nowadays depend on the internet, without knowing their limits or when to stop.

The internet can be a place where people have the ability to interact with each other, post videos and pictures, or even state their thoughts and opinion about a certain matter online. Then again, everything can turn the other way around and turn into a dark place where hate is being spread and online harassment continues to happen.

People use the internet to take advantage of things for themselves, whether it’s for pleasure purposes, money, or many other things. Stuff like this continues to happen even though the internet already has certain guidelines and regulations, but people choose to ignore them and proceed using the internet without acknowledging the rules that they have to follow to surf on the internet properly.

The problem of cyberbullying

Social media is a platform that people use to express themselves through their accounts. There are certain policy and guidelines that are implied in social medias, usually linked with age and permission in order to have access into social media. The goal of a social media policy is to set expectations for appropriate behavior and to make sure that the user does not share unwanted things online that could cause legal problems or public embarrassment.

Unfortunately, social media users nowadays don’t seem to bother to follow the policy. It is easy enough to lie about a certain age to get access into social media. Not only that, but some use social media the wrong way and spread hate and negativity all over the internet. Things like this can turn into a serious issue, especially since it’s been going on for a long time and no one seems to do anything about it. The usage of social media is to post daily activities through pictures or videos; we are also free to share our thoughts and opinions as long as they are harmless and follow the social media policy.

As years passed by, the action of crime happening has online increased. Crime started off as robbery, murder, kidnapping, corruption, etc. But nowadays, technology is more advanced and people have more chance in committing crime through the internet. This type of crime is commonly known as cybercrime. Several examples of the occurrence of cybercrime in the internet include hacking, stealing ID, harassment in the internet, etc. Technology is very sophisticated nowadays that people could just intentionally access into unknown accounts even if they don’t personally know you.

One of the factors that give people the need to commit cybercrime is when people know the amount of money we have in our bank, therefore people would want to take money from your bank without permission and approval. Another example would be scamming people through phone calls with certain excuses such as claiming that one of your family members is sick and they needed money when it’s actually a scam.

The chances of a serious conflict to happen such as online harassment can increase if the problem continues to be ignored and no one tries to come up with a solution. Online harassment is one of the many ongoing issues that occur on the internet, it is defined as an action that includes threatening or spreading hate through the internet. “40% of internet users have personally experienced online harassment, 38% of people who have experienced online harassment said that a stranger was responsible for their most recent incident, and 26% said that they did not know the real identity of the perpetrator”.

Online harassment can be done in several ways, one of them being cyber bullying. Cyber bullying is one of the most common issues that occur among people, especially among teenagers. The occurrence of cyber bullying happening has drastically increased in 2019, leading more cyber bullying cases to happen. In fact, just like any other bullying cases and victims, cyber bullied victims experience low self-esteem, fear, depression, and anxiety that could cause them to struggle in school. Some cases of cyber bullying could even cause the victim to end their lives.

The action of cyber bullying normally occurs throughout the school environment, with the purpose to bring down a victim. This occurs because the cyber bully erodes their self-confidence and self-esteem. This issue still continues to happen around the world, especially around the school environment where students feel like they had the need to bring down others. The amount of people who became victims of this crime doubles in a year.

Cyberbullying is not the only form of cybercrime that has a huge impact towards the community. Other forms of cybercrime like hacking, scamming, and others also has a huge impact towards social development. Each individual from the crime could make a fake account and could spread negative comments throughout a post that could hurt a victim mentally. This could make a huge impact towards the victim. Spam can also infect a computer with malware, malware that is designed to harm the computer or spy on someone whom this happens a lot.

One of the well-known cases of cyber bullying is the case of Amanda Todd. Amanda Todd was a 15 year old girl who got scammed and blackmailed by a Dutch man that she met online. She was manipulated into thinking that he was a kind man with no bad intentions. Amanda and the man talked through video chat, but long after they talked, she was told to take off her clothes during a video chat and the man secretly took a picture of her. He then used those pictures as blackmail material and use it against her as a threat. He threatened her by saying that he would publish a picture of her breasts online for everyone to see, that includes her friends and family, if she didn’t agree to do what he says.

Amanda then found out that the man has published her pictures online and later on got many hate and threats online by people from her school. Some of the comments also tell her to commit suicide. It doesn’t just stop there, Amanda also got bullied in school to the point where her classmates started to physically abuse her. Not long after that, Amanda Todd committed suicide and ended her life in 2012. The man was then arrested in January 2014.

Another issue related to cyber bullying happened in December 2016. Brandy Vela, an 18 year old girl from Texas ended her life by shooting herself in the chest as her family members watch her, due to her classmates cyberbullying her. Brandy repeatedly received abusive texts messages. Not only that, someone made a fake Facebook account of her, trying to ruin her image and reputation. The bullies would make fake dating websites of her where her phone number and pictures are leaked. They would lie about her age and claims that she is giving herself up for free sex.

On the very same day before she killed herself, Brandy sent an e-mail to her parents informing them that she is going to end her life. Her family immediately rushed to her area and found her alive. Unfortunately, Brandy still proceeds to kill herself even after her family members persuade her not to. “We tried to persuade her to put the gun down, but she was determined. She said she’d come too far to turn back. It was very unfortunate that I had to see that. It’s hard when your daughter tells you to turn around. You feel helpless.”

Another cyber bullying case that happened in January 2018, where two 12 year olds in Florida cyber bullied a middle school student, Gabriella Green, who then ended her life by hanging herself with a dog leash she found in her closet. The two girls who committed the crime were then arrested for their actions. The perpetrators consisted of making up things about the victim, claiming that she has a sexually transmitted disease, name calling, and threats to spread private and sensitive information bout the victim. “Nationally, about 1-in-3 children say they are cyber bullied, and about 12 percent say they have bullied others online, according to Sameer Hinduja, a criminology professor at Florida Atlantic University and co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center”.

In order to prevent and reduce the occurrence of cyberbullying, there has to be a movement to change how modern society’s mindset works and someone needs to step up to raise awareness so every social media user are familiar with the ongoing issues of cyber bullying. Cyber bullying has taken over all over the internet and should be solved immediately in order to reduce the number of victims and deaths. Our generation isn’t quite familiar with the terms of cyber bullying, and how one wrong action could destroy someone’s self-esteem which then lead them to experience depression and anxiety.

Some people still think cyber bullying is a joke, some won’t even take this matter seriously. This is why I think that our generation should open their minds and raise awareness, by having schools to educate their students about the importance of esteem needs. People need to be reminded that prestige and the feeling of accomplishment is very important once it comes to your mental health.

Students need to be taught to be aware about the dangers of cyber bullying and how it can lead to a certain death. Yet, this task should not only be done by teachers, parents are also responsible into teaching their child on how to use the internet properly and what they can do to improve their child’s learning and internet use. It’s important to teach children how to use the internet once they already have access to the internet, so that they are familiar with the terms and proper usage of the internet.

Not only that, any type of social media platform should restate their policy. The policy of social media should be emphasized so it can fulfill the goals of ethical behaviour on the internet. Social media guidelines should be more strict in order for it to be effective. This way, underaged social media users have no access to create a social media account and use it. It’s not that underage users aren’t allowed to share their thoughts, pictures, or videos on social media, but the internet is a whole different world filled with things that aren’t 100% guaranteed to be safe.

The social media policy was made for a reason, and it is to keep unwanted conflicts to happen on the internet. It’s best to have an age limit to access into social medias for the sake of children’s safety. The guidelines of social medias should be emphasized so the users are aware of what not to spread on the internet. There should also be a censor that detects any unwanted comments that might relate to harassment, this way, the chances of cyber bullying to occur will decrease since negative comments will be blocked on social media.

The government should also emphasize the law of freedom from interference with privacy, family, home and correspondence, to make sure that everyone is aware that every human needs their own freedom and privacy. Everyone deserves to be treated with respect, especially when it comes to privacy and personal matters. It is the basic law of human rights, it refers to the need for respect, self-esteem, and self-confidence. Esteem needs are the basis for the human desire we all have to be accepted and valued by others. Violating the laws should be paid by taking consequences that balances their actions. Proper consequences would be paying a certain fine for illegal use of social media.

Conclusion

To conclude the essay, I think that ethical behaviour is very important when it comes to using technology. Technology has evolved over the years and our generation has completely taken over social media. Personally, I want to be able to make an example of how to properly use the internet for the goods. As a digital citizen, I need to be aware about the things post and spread on the internet, I need to make sure that it doesn’t violate the policy. As a person who uses social media on a daily basis, I need to apply ethical behaviour when searching on the internet to stay away from unwanted things to happen.

As for now, I can say that I already implied ethical behaviour whenever I’m using the internet, I make sure to spread positivity and stay away from negativity, as long as the things I post or state online don’t offend or harm anyone, I would say that I am able to control myself when I’m on the internet. This behaviour should be followed by other internet users out there to stay away from online harassment. This way, the internet could be a safer place, without needing any hate to spread among others.

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