The proliferation of the internet and the ubiquity of the smartphone have resulted in people being able to access the internet anytime and anywhere. Today most public places like shopping malls provide Wi-Fi services for customers to access the internet. Most cellular services now come with data services as well. In fact, most people now prefer to use their smartphone for internet access instead of investing in computers and broadband connection . From banking transactions to reading newspapers, everything is now done online. Another phenomenon that has been growing steadily over the years is the use of social media over the internet. Websites like Facebook and Instagram are synonymous with social networking. More people that ever find it convenient to logon to a social media site to connect to their friends and families, share life events and in general share information.
In the US, 72% of adults use Facebook regularly . This figure is close to the proportion of teenagers who use the social networking site – 71% . Instagram is used by 59% of adults and 52% of teenagers. Snapchat is more popular among teenagers with 41% regularly using the tool. Among adults, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn are the other commonly used websites. Among smartphone users, messaging apps are the most in demand. Whatsapp, Kik or iMessage are all very popular. Also popular are Snapchat and Wickr which automatically delete sent messages. The popularity of messaging apps across age groups is due to the fact that when using Wi-Fi, there is no SMS cost. It’s effectively free messaging services. Among adults, it is the 18-29 demographic that is most active on social media, with 82% of social media users falling in this age group. Among teenagers, the 13-15 demographic is very active, although in the 16-17 demographic more boys are on social media than girls . This is the reverse of the trend with adults. More women (77%) than men use social media.
88% of teenagers have or have access to cell phones. 90% of teenagers use cell phones for the purpose of exchanging texts. In fact a typical teenager sends and receives 30 texts in a day .
Statistically, it is evident that teenagers and adults today have more access to and are accessing the internet and social media. What is less evident from mere statistics and what this paper aims to show is that constant social media and internet exposure also exposes children and adults to online bullying and harassment. The internet provides an anonymous platform for people to interact with and not all interactions need to be benign. Through a review of the literature available on the subject, this paper will establish what is cyber bullying, how social media contributes to the issue, who are the general victims and perpetrators, what the general outcomes are and what are the measures that can be implemented against victimization.
Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying is a form of aggressive behavior that is perpetrated repeatedly against a defenseless victim using electronic forms of contact like MMS, SMS, email, YouTube or Facebook . In many cases it has been considered worse than traditional bullying because it can be done anonymously, can be initiated against several people at a time, it has lower levels of direct feedback, there are no limitations to duration of the bullying and the spaces within which it can be carried out. Also, there can almost be nil supervision.
The latest generations of children are among the first to grow up in a continuously wired environment. For them, social media and the internet are a natural part of their lives. Adults too have started to utilize this medium more frequently. While the internet and social media have benefits like faster access to information and increased speeds of communication, it also has a negative side.
Face-to-face bullying by peers is experienced by children world over. One in six children report bullying at least once a week and some have faced continuous bullying for six months or more . Historically, it was not viewed as a problem; it was seen as something, “a phase”, that children would outgrow. It is only in recent years that it has been recognized as a serious problem that starts at the school yard and may end up in the boardroom. The outstanding feature of bullying is that it is repeated aggression targeted at an individual or a group without any provocation. More often than not there will be an audience on standby who don’t overtly encourage it, but who also don’t discourage.
When carried over to the internet space, this bullying becomes more insidious because unlike a schoolyard, the victim cannot escape. Continuous connectivity means that the bully can follow the victim electronically throughout the day. Since anyone can assume any identity online, the victim does not even know who the perpetrator is. Similar to physical bullying, this form of bullying also inflicts injury albeit it is emotional and psychological . Physical injury to oneself is a consequence of the emotional and psychological injury. Also, people who perpetrate Cyberbullying are often involved in offline delinquent behavior. It was also found that children more often use cellular phones for sending abusive texts, while older children used social media and other electronic means to continue bullying their victims.
In the case of adults, the violence can become an extension of domestic violence against women, and sometimes even men. Women are stalked by their partners or ex-partners through social media. A form of “revenge pornography” has become a common tool to bully women . Intimate photos and videos of the victims are posted to their social media pages without their consent. When such postings are carried out during the victims’ work hour, it exposes the victim to be shamed in their workplace. Another more impactful method is to post such photographs and videos to their company’s page on Facebook or other social media websites that the company has a presence on. In fact in an American study it was found that social media was the most common medium for carrying out harassment.
Who are the bullies and why they bully?
In a study of school children it was found that most children reported that bullying was carried out by people their own age or older . Close to 40% reported that they were bullied by a single person, while 24% said that they were bullied by groups consisting of 2-3 people. It was also noted that the children were not able to identify their bullies with certainty since electronic media provides a lot of anonymity. It was also significant that the incidence of social media bullying increased in older age groups with 26% older children having been victims of bullying through these websites. It was also found that girls were more likely to be the victims and also more likely to be cyberbullied.
Among adults the bullies maybe known people as in the case of family members in a dispute or partners and ex-partners who mean to harm or it may be an unknown assailant who is simply looking to harass someone. In adult parlance, the word ‘bullying’ is replaceable with ‘trolling’. In effect, they are the same things because they abuse the reader and make personal comments. In a particular case on Facebook, a woman known as Carla Louise reported the case of racial and sexual verbal abuse to Facebook . A man had been continuously harassing a woman friend of Carla’s by making derogatory remarks about her inter-racial relationship, making references to her various body parts and used racially abusive words like ‘negro’. Later Carla herself was bullied by a man with the online name of ‘Jack’. He continuously pursued Carla on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms that she was active on. When she blocked him out electronically, he created another identity and continued to post derogatory remarks on her social media pages. He also posted several pictures with comments and hashtags that were deliberately sexual and gender-biased in general.
One of the reasons for Cyberbullying among children is their need for social acceptance . Children tend to accept friend requests and followers on social media to feel part of a group and for peer acceptance. They also tend to accept requests from people who their peers think are worthy of being friends with regardless of the extent of the acquaintance. Hinduja and Patchin employed Robert Agnew’s General Strain Theory or GST to explain how bullying can start. According to the theory, a person comes under strain upon encountering three events. The strain can lead to delinquent behavior. The three events were identified as i) Failure to achieve a perceived positive goal ii) Removal of positively valued stimuli and iii) Presentation of negative stimuli.
When a teenager sends a request and is willfully rejected, the same peer-pressure applies to him. He feels socially rejected and harbors anger and resentment toward the people who would not include him in their group. Since he was not able to achieve what he viewed as a positive goal, and the people he viewed as positive stimuli removed themselves from him, he now responds negatively to the situation through online abuse of the people who rejected him. This is but one plausible reason.
Among adults, abusive people may also resort to a practice called ‘trolling’ to perpetuate their bullying tactics. Social media is used extensively by people who are generally marginalized by mainstream society, like people suffering from diseases who seek support, racial minority groups, sexual minority groups, and women’s groups . They are using the anonymity of the Internet to discuss sensitive issues they aren’t able to in the outside world. This same anonymity gives bullies an outlet to harass these groups. Trolling refers to a willfully disruptive tactic that steers forum conversations away from the subject and can escalate to personal attacks. A study conducted on the behavioral aspects of ‘trolls’ found that they share similar characteristics with sadists, in that they derive pleasure from the distress of others . Although there is no empirical research completely linking trolling behavior to other forms of Cyberbullying, it is accepted that it has the same characteristics as bullying and that it uses the anonymity feature of the Internet to forward its goals. However, most serious abuse on the Internet like stalking, harassment, threats, appear to be carried out due to conflicts arising from personal disputes.
Outcomes of Cyberbullying
One of the pervasive outcomes of Cyberbullying both for children and adults is the feeling of isolation . By harassing the victim’s family and friends, bullies create mistrust and anger among the victim and their support systems. Fear for offline safety is another common outcome . People start to always be on the alert for attack from any direction. They scan both their online world and their offline world for trouble which leads to performance issues in their academics and work. They may also withdraw socially online and offline in order to avoid confrontation with their bullies.
Another and possibly even more impactful outcome is suicide . Case studies from around the world revealed that continuously bullying can cause children to commit suicide. The most traumatic case study enumerated by Bhat was that of a 13 year old boy called Ryan who took his own life in 2003. The bullying and sexual harassment was allegedly carried out by a boy and involved spreading rumors that Ryan was gay and providing encouragement to commit suicide. When a female classmate rejected Ryan, more support in the form of suicide ideation came from the bully. Ryan’s parents were never able to find the identity of the person who was bullying Ryan.
Children who have been bullied tend to have lower self-esteem, poor social adjustment, psychological distress like anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. However, unlike physical bullying, both Cyberbullying and its impact remain undetected as long as the victims don’t ask for help.
Social media’s role in online violence
Social media as a platform for people to interact with can be used by people to perpetrate violence as well. In a study it was found that young people tend to use social media to promote violence in specific ways . Cyberbullying through rude messages and comments to the more severe form by posting embarrassing photos and videos on websites are common methods used by bullies. A particular case of violence that is often found on social media but generally missed by the communities is the threats by young people about shooting their school mates. The study by Patton and Jun showed that teenagers who had utilized social media or online forums were more likely to carry out the threat. More than half the teenagers had already made preparations for carrying out the threat. Social media provides a platform for youngsters with similar ideas to meet on forums, discuss their methods and reinforce their violent ideas. Other studies have shown that peer group pressure in such forums are far greater than even normal peer group pressure.
The anonymity of the internet also seems to provide young people the platform to indulge in at risk behaviors. Significant number of young girls engaged in sexual risk behavior online and sometimes continued the behavior offline which leads them to be exposed to physical violence. It was found that 54% of older youth engaged had references to violence, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, and sex in their social media profiles. It was also notable that more girls than boys announced their interest in sexual risk behavior when compared to boys. This seemed to stem from the social pressure on girls and women to highlight their sexuality in all walks of life. This opens the gateway for cyberbullies to comment, post pictures and generally harass girls and women. It also provides avenues for sexual predators to take advantage of such young people.
Gang violence and cyber suicide were other forms of violence that found forums on social media. Gangs use social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace to engage with members of the same gang or create dialog with members of other gangs. They post videos, announce activities, post dares, display photos of weapons, discuss recent homicides and investigations mostly to make fun, belittle victimization. Other forms of violence include selling drugs through social media, threatening people online, carrying out violent acts offline based on online interactions and even posting threatening videos on the social media pages of people they want to coerce.
Cyber-suicide is a form of self-directed violence which has found a foothold in social media. Suicide ideas are shared on forums, or on the personal profiles of people are often indicative of the intent to commit suicide due to perceived failures in personal relationships, or mental health issues. Facebook is again the predominant platform for discussing suicidal ideas.
Social media’s role in preventing violence
In the earlier case of Carla Louise, Facebook did not respond to her by removing the profiles of the cyberbullies. Facebook reported that none of the content was enough to warrant such action. In a way, Facebook was tied down by its own principles of promoting free speech. Also community standards are very much self-regulated. However, Twitter has changed its policy on abusive profiles and trolls. It removes accounts that are reported as trolls after its own investigation. But as such censoring in social media comes with the risk of consumer backlash due to the free nature of internet.
However social media can be used as effective platform for countering bullying and other forms of violence. It can be used to make people aware of what all can happen in the cyberworld and how to prevent injury to themselves.
In the case of cyber-suicide it has been noted that when people posted ideas on Facebook about committing suicide, members of the forums came forward to try and help them . By connecting such forums to the official pages of suicide helpline organizations also present on Facebook, proper intervention can be initiated.
Similarly, there should be helpline forums on social media websites that allow users to post their issues on the forums. If a case of bullying can be established, the social media website can choose to remove such accounts or report extreme cases to law enforcement. Although there are no explicit laws for Cyberbullying, existing penal codes around assault, terroristic threats, harassment, menacing, stalking, and hate crimes could potentially be applied to Cyberbullying .
In the case of children, parents are the best line of defense. It has been noted that by setting clear rules for social media interaction and having an open discussion with children goes a long way in mitigating exposure to unwanted experiences . A study also showed that more teenagers have their parents listed as their friends on most social media sites . This helps in discouraging both bullying by other people and also prevents the teenagers themselves in engaging in risky behavior.
Social media websites can further help this cause by facilitating and encouraging people to talk to parents or partners or law enforcement about any online violence they witness or experience. Social media sites can sensitize parents and law enforcement on the need for non-judgmental approach to discussions.
Conclusion
Social media is a platform on the internet for people to share emotions and ideas. It also provides forums for people to discuss a wide range of topics. However it can also be sometimes used for negative things like promoting and engaging in violence. Social media itself can be used to overcome this issue. A combination of promoting awareness among users in general, providing support for victims and regulating their policies on violent content can help social media websites condemn online violence without violating freedom of the internet.
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