Cyberbullying

                                                                         Taylor Keselica

                    Cyberbullying

In class we talked about bullying online and the negative effects that it has on children nowadays.  We spoke of a particular case where a kid’s mother went online to make a fake Facebook page and pretended to talk to a girl then began to cyber bully her so the girl committed suicide.  Due to the obvious negative effects of cyber bullying, the Australian government is beginning to crack down on it by targeting social media sites.  A new bill was introduced to parliament to appoint a commissioner with the power to order large social media services and individuals to remove any offensive material posted online. There is a debate in the United States on whether or not children should be prosecuted for cyber bullying but the state of Maryland has made a decision on the matter.  According to an article by Jenny Inglee on takepart.com, Maryland proposed a bill known as Grace’s Law that will make online bullying a misdemeanor in that state which can be punishable by imprisonment for up to one year and /or a $500 maximum fine. Unfortunately, however, because cyber bullying can happen at any time of day and messages and images that portray bullying behaviors can be posted anonymously through harassing text messages, posts on Facebook, and other forms of communication online, it can be hard to address every individual occurrence. In my opinion, cyber bullying should be punishable by the law. If a person can be charged with harassment, they should be charged with cyber bullying because cyber bullying encompasses harassment within it.  Another reason I believe cyber bullying should be punishable by law is because it can have seriously low affects on those who are being bullied.  Some of the effects include what we talked about in class such as low self-esteem and low confidence.  Not only does cyber bullying create feelings of depression for the victim but those feelings of depression can lead to hindrances in life.  When someone has feelings of depression they are more likely to miss school or drop out which creates a well of perpetual sadness that can lead to feelings of helplessness and thoughts of suicide.  Many websites have also been created to stop cyber bullying such as fundforcivility.com and stopcyberbullying.gov.  The creation of these websites is directly due to the high statistics of cyber bullying. According to the website internetsafety101.org, 95% of social media-using teens who have witnessed cruel behavior on social networking sites say they have seen others ignoring the mean behavior, 55% of those people experiencing this behavior frequently, 90% of social media-using teens who have witnessed online cruelty say they have ignored mean behavior on social media, and only 7% of parents report being worried about cyber bullying even though 33% of teenagers report having been victims of cyber bullying. The website also shows that teens engage in cyber bullying to show off to friends (11%), to be mean (14%), to embarrass them (21%), for fun or entertainment (28%), because they deserved it (58%), and to get back at someone (58%).  Finally, of all these teens who engaged in cyber bullying, a total of 68% of teens agree that cyber bullying is a serious problem with today’s use.  This just shows that even though a majority of teens see cyber bullying as this serious problem, there are still so many teens who do not even care about it and do not think of the serious effects cyber bullying can have on people.