Cyberbullying: Suicide and Digital Technologies Essay

Submitted By Lauren-Scalzo
Words: 669
Pages: 3

Cyber-Bullying is when a child, preteen or teen 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. It is normally instigated by minor and is targeted towards another minor. When an adult finds out, it is called cyber-harassment or cyber-stalking. When an adult is targeted, it is never called cyber-bullying. Cyber-Bullying is a Cyber-Crime; a Cyber-Crime is a crime conducted via the internet and/or some other computer network. Over 3.2 million students are victims of cyber-bullying each year. There are psychological and emotional outcomes of cyber-bullying and they are similar to those of real-life bullying. There is a difference though and that difference is that real-life often ends when the school day is over with. When someone is being cyber-bullied, there is no escaping it, it keeps getting worse each day. Nearly 43% of kids have been bullied online and one in four has had it happen more than once. Only 70% of student’s reports seeing frequent bullying online but one in four teachers see nothing wrong with bullying and will only intervene 4% of the time. Over two-thirds of students believe that schools respond poorly to bullying and with a high percentage of students believing that adult help is ineffective. Many teens use a cell phone every day which makes it the most common medium for cyber-bullying. Many teens believe that cyber-bullying is a serious problem and many have personally witnessed some type of bullying at school whether directly or indirectly and they report those incidents of bullying as a problem at their school. 81% of teens think that is it easier to bully online and get away with it than bully in person. Students in grades K-12 are either a bully or the victim and many students in grades 4-8 report being victims of bullying. Many teens tend to ignore social media bullying but others who have noticed it tell the cyber bully to stop what they are doing but most of the time they don’t listen. One in ten victims will inform a parent or a trusted adult about their abuse and most of the time they will ignore it because they don’t think that it is that bad until their son or daughter commits suicide; bullying victims are two to nine times more likely to commit suicide. Boys are just as likely as girls to be victims and the