Introduction
Technology is impacting every aspect of our life today, and on one hand where we see revolutionary advantage of Technology, we also cannot deny that there is a completely different side to it as well. Communication is a very important part of life but today adolescents have shifted to cyber social networking and the physical social networking has been restricted only to special occasions. Lack of time in today’s fast lifestyle and technology has also contributed to the abundance of electronic communication which provides fast (almost instant) connect and variety of channels.
Widespread of communication channels like the social media, blogs, chat rooms etc. have resulted in a new from of bullying known as “Cyber Bullying”, in this paper we will look at the various modes of cyber bullying and its effect on teenagers socially
Cyber Bullying: A new form of bullying and social evil . . .
This can actually happen with any mode of communication, but there are several reasons due to which cyber bullying has become more and more advanced with time and also proportionally harmful. It can be in any form text, picture or video messages and web-based communication like chat rooms, emails, discussion boards, news groups, websites etc.. A common type of bullying may include harassment, harmful speech, and invasion of personal privacy, stalking, public sharing of personal content, dissemination of abusive, threatening or violent material.[ CITATION Bam09 \l 1033 ]
There are several reasons as to why cyber bullying is more harmful than any other form of bullying and therefore let’s look at some of these reasons and their effects..
Anonymity – This allows the internet users to use psedonyms while using chat rooms, making a profile on online social networks, participating in a discussion forum and writing a blog etc. now this allows the user to mask his identity and publish a content online which may harass another individual or hamper, reveal his or her identity over these forums. There is another additional activity which is Masquerading and it can be more like an identity theft where the attacker gains the password of the victim thus sharing, managing or publishing content with victim’s identity which could result in serious threat to the victim, upto legal prosecution. As a result of the above the victim may face torture from an anonymous person online and this can lead to hampered identity, psycological and mental frustration, also one can see random emotions like anger and sadness at times.[ CITATION Bam09 \l 1033 ]
Harassment – There are multiple ways of Harassing an individual online and this is one of the most common cyber-bullying, it basically involves threatning, abusive messaging, bulk message attack on the user’s profile by a group. Cyberstalking is another term used for the attacks that involve sending offensive comments via direct communication channels in order to create a threat in the mind of an individual or a group and mostly there is a fear developed that the online threats may ultimately result in a real stalking. Once again this will directly cause mental torture and at times seriously impact the mental level of the victim, lonliness and frustration will slowly appear and repeated instances can also lead to suicidal attempts[ CITATION Gov10 \l 1033 ].
Flaming – Flaming may be simply an argument between two individuals or groups with a display of anger and use of extremely offensive or vulgar language, this might be happening on a social networking space, discussion forum or a chat room and there are online emotions such as capital letters, oscene images etc. used. This type of activity can really create an unfriendly environment between two individuals and even groups, as the exchange of harshness online may lead to other social issues like alieanation or depression. This is basically a mutual argument and might not have very serious effects however this can lead to other cyber-bullying activities taking place[ CITATION Bam09 \l 1033 ].
Outing – This has proved as one of the most dangerous and harmful type of cyber-bullying and involves public display of personal information, pictures or videos, specially containing or related to sexual & explicit material. Another type of such activities may involve accessing personal emails or messages from someone’s personal account and using (threatening to use) the material in public forums. Outing can cause serious harm to one’s self-esteem and may compel the victim to take unwanted steps, also this has an extremely harmful psychological impact and can simply shatter the confidence level of the victim[ CITATION Bam09 \l 1033 ].
The problem with all the above mentioned techniques is that, they are too personal and may keep on impacting an individual without the knowledge of parents or guardians and therefore by the time they get revealed it’s too late and there would have been a considerable amount of psychological or physical damage that could be fixed readily.
Lastly, most of the cyber bullying activities have similar effects on individuals and despite this happening online there are some serious social effects as discussed, in case of adolescents the effect is very strong and an early detection is not possible as most of them try to hide these activities due to the fear of insult. The result of such an activity can range from a simple depression to suicidal attempts and therefore we may not deny the fact that this must be taken seriously. [ CITATION Bam09 \l 1033 ]
Conclusion
Cyber-bullying is very common today and is spreading very quickly as the use of internet is increasing, we have already discussed that the factors like anonymity, harassment, flaming and outing can result in very serious mental effect on an individual or a group and this ultimately results in a social impact as the effect drives the social behavior accordingly. We have discussed the adverse effects of cyber bullying on teenagers and it definitely gives us an idea and approximation of the social impacts that occur as a result.
Works Cited
Bamford, D. A. (2009). Cyber-Bullying AHISA Pastoral Care. Sydney: University of Technology.
Govenment of Australia. (2010). Cyberlaw Australia. Retrieved May 22, 2011, from cyberlaw.org.au: http://cyberlaw.org.au/2010/04/25/the-internet-and-cyber-bullying/
