Cyber-Bullying

Cyber-Bulling

 

 In today’s world which has been made smaller by technology, new age problems have been born. No doubt technology has a lot of benefits; however, it also comes with a negative side. It has given birth to cyber-bullying.

Let's talk about what really is Cyber Bullying. Cyber-bullying is the use of cell phones, instant messaging, e-mail, chat rooms or Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to harass, threaten or intimidate someone.

Cyber-bullying can include such acts as making threats, sending provocative insults or racial or ethnic slurs, gay bashing, attempting to infect the victim's computer with a virus and flooding an e-mail inbox with messages. If you are a victim, you can deal with cyber-bullying to some extent by limiting computer connection time, not responding to threatening or defamatory messages, and never opening e-mail messages from sources you do not recognize or from known sources of unwanted communications. More active measures include Blacklisting or Whitelisting e-mail accounts, changing e-mail addresses, changing ISPs, changing cell phone accounts and attempting to trace the source.

 

Some Facts one must know!

1. Instagram is the social media site where most young people report experiencing cyber-bullying, with 42% of those surveyed experiencing harassment on the platform.

2.  Only 1 in 10 teen victims will inform a parent or trusted adult of their abuse.

3.  95% of teens in the U.S. are online, and the vast majority access the internet on their mobile device, making it the most common medium for cyber bullying.

4. About 37% of young people between the ages of 12 and 17 have been bullied online. 30% have had it happen more than once.

5. Girls are more likely than boys to be both victims and perpetrators of cyber bullying. 15% of teen girls have been the target of at least four different kinds of abusive online behaviors, compared with 6% of boys.

6. About half of LGBTQ + students experience online harassment -- a rate higher than average.

 

 Prevention

Cyber-bullying prevention is the need of the hour. It needs to be monitored and put an end to. There are various ways to tackle cyber-bullying. We can implement them at individual levels as well as authoritative levels.
Most importantly, never ever share your internet password and account details with anyone. Keep all this information to yourself alone. Be alert and do not click on mysterious links, they may be scams. In addition, teach your kids about cyber-bullying and make them aware of what’s wrong and right.

 Effective approaches to dealing with cyber-bullying must involve education, prevention, detection, and remediation; and requires involvement from parents, teachers, school administrators, children, and law enforcement.

 Although technology is the catalyst that allows cyber-bullying to take place, new trends in cyber-bullying detection and prevention for schools involves the use of technology, such as IT management platforms to set alerts for administrators when students use a school device for cyber-bullying.

 

Although, there's a lot to say about cyber bullying. Cyber-bullying is a multi-faced issue. However, the intention of this activity is one and the same. To hurt people and bring them harm. Cyber-bullying is not a light matter. It needs to be taken seriously as it does have a lot of dangerous effects on the victim. So, we need to protect ourselves by wisely watching our own activities and should not indulge in something that we might regret later.

 

 

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By Hanu Sharma