Social Media And Cyberbullying

Everyone, or at least most of everyone, has heard of bullying, been bullied, or even became the bully themselves. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, bullying is the abuse and mistreatment of someone vulnerable by someone stronger or more powerful. In the American school system, children and teenagers have been exposed to bullying. Now, with technology becoming more influential and more of today’s youth having access to social media sites, they are more vulnerable to bullies online. This is called cyberbullying.

In this era of globalization, technology has become more prevalent in our society. Many young people nowadays are indulging in social media and technology such as smartphone, laptop, Facebook and twitter to communicate with one another with the help of internet. This has brought a big influence in today’s generation and make them feel miserable without using it in a day. With this technology advancement, people now have even more opportunities to cyberbully others. Chisholm (2014) defined cyberbullying as the intentional and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones or other electronic devices.

Any person with technology can know almost anything about everyone because of the Internet. Bullies can use this power to embarrass a child with personal information that would not be revealed without the Internet. Any type of bullying can hurt someone, but only cyberbullying can hurt someone by embarrassing the person in front of millions. In an article about prosecuting cyber-bullies, the author writes, “While a traditional bully might be able to embarrass his or her victim in front of a few other schoolmates, cyber-bullies … have the ability to humiliate their targets … in front of potentially thousands or even millions of viewers” (“Prosecuting Cyberbullies”). If a bully in the non-technology world showed an embarrassing photo of a victim, only a few people would have access to see.

“Social media sites allow teens to accomplish online many of the tasks that are important to them offline: staying connected with friends and family, making new friends, sharing pictures, and exchanging ideas. Social media participation also can offer adolescents deeper benefits that extend into their view of self, community, and the world” (O'Keeffe, Gwenn Schurgin, et al. “The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents, and Families”). However, having so many people being able to have access to a platform can also have negative percussions.

Teenagers are usually the major victims of this epidemic, paying with their lives for something largely out of their hands. Sam Laird cites OnlineCollege.org’s infographic in his article, “Cyberbullying: Scourge of the Internet”, stating that “90% of teens who witness cyberbullying online say they ignore it, just 40% tell their parents and 81% of kids say it's easier to get away with bullying online than in person.” OnlineCollege.org’s infographic on cyberbullying continues the discussion with an astonishing statistic, that one out of five cyberbullied teens think about suicide - and one out of ten

Suicide in Social Media Social media now plays a major role in our generation, which can be accessed at the tip of our fingers now making it hard to ignore the things we see. Allowing many people to share almost every minute of their life all over some form of social media. Social media can be addicting “An increase in suicide rates among US teens occurred at the same time social media use surged and new analysis suggest there may be a link” ( “Newsela”) Technology has changed over the following years, but that doesn’t change the fact of “cyber bullying” still exists in our generation. It’s just displayed as a different form of “bullying”, there’s a billion things that are posted on social media each seen in a different perspective giving a

2021315 Is Social Media Beneficial for Teens? Facebook, Twitter, WeChat, Skype and Messages are all sorts of social media, many of us use those applications at least a several times on a daily basis. Defining social media as a online tool to communicate with the world, here I will stand on the negative side of this resolution. Many ones, including parents, faculty member, and even teenagers themselves strongly believe that social media is beneficial and entertaining. But, the reality is, the negatives of social media outweigh the positive sides by a colossal difference.

1.0 Introduction This report is about the impacts of cyberbullying on teenagers. It aims to raise awareness about the seriousness of it and also allowing people to know how they can prevent it from happening in the future. Cyberbullying,as suggested by its name,is a form of bullying where the victim is tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted by another child, preteen or teen using the Internet, interactive and digital technologies or mobile phones. The number of cases involving cyberbullying has also increased overtime,indicating that this is serious problem that has to be addressed as soon as possible. The examples of cyberbullying include mean text messages or emails, rumors sent by email or posted on

Cyber bullying is a very dangerous way of bullying kids and teens. Every year about 95% of kids and teens who use technology and social media websites have been affected by cyber bullying. Cyber bullying is dangerous because it can cause psychological problems especially to kids and teens because of their young age. Cyber bullying can be done through different types of technology such as computer, phones, tablets, and can also be done through social media websites. One example of cyber bullying is using facebook and making fun of a person constantly and posting pictures without their knowledge of you posting it.

By definition, it occurs among young people. When an adult is involved, it may meet the definition of cyber-harassment or cyberstalking, a crime that can have legal consequences and involve jail time. (Foundation, 2015).Bullying through social media is continuing to grown and it is a problem that is affecting thousands of adolescents on a day to day basis. Cyber bullying can be more severe than tradition bullying because most of online bullying is anonymous, therefore it allows the attacker to be as cruel as they want without anyone knowing who they are. Any person can set up a fake account on a number of social media sites if they have a valid email address, unfortunately this makes it very difficult to trace the person behind the

Cyberbullying is a huge problem in the United States, that happens everyday. Cyberbullying is the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature. It affects many people in a negative way and it has to be controlled. In order to do this, schools should be allowed to limit students’ online speech because it affects people's lives and distracts everyone in a school environment. Bullying others through a screen can affect people’s lives mentally, physically, and emotionally.