Author: Payton Prucha
Essay topic: Cyberbullying
Tyler Clementi, a shy 18-year-old Rutgers University (New Jersey) freshman with a passion for playing the violin, jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge on September 22, 2010. His last words, posted onto his Facebook profile about 10 minutes before he died, were: "Jumping off the gw bridge sorry." This occurred after a sexual encounter he had with a man in his dorm room was allegedly video streamed over the internet without Clementi's knowledge, by his fellow first-year students Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, and after a second attempt was made by Ravi to record Clementi's sexual encounters. Ravi and Wei were charged with invasion of privacy. Over several of years, and through many technological advances social media bullying has taken many teenage lives, it has changed the way that parents and kids have looked at social media and it needs to end or the people who created social media, Mark Zuckerburg, need to make a way to understand the true meaning of social media.
Social media bullying is a problem, especially for teenagers they seem to revolve around Facebook and Snapchat. It is a way for kids to express what they are feeling. Some kids use it to torment others because it is one of the good ways not to get caught. Like Clementi, so many teenagers have committed suicide because of a single comment or a status. It doesn’t always happens face to face, when bullying takes place it could be over the internet, or on the phone. Traditional bullying v. Cyberbullying Technology’s progression is often equated with the advancement of human societies. Pivotal innovations, such as the Internet, have forever changed how people interact. Though these developments have allowed the human race to make great strides in many fields, they have also allowed forms of transgression to become more rampant and widespread. This is evident when considering how traditional bullying has evolved into an issue today known as cyberbullying. While bullying and cyberbullying are often similar in terms of form and technique they also have many differences. Unlike traditional bullying, cyberbullying allows the offender to mask his or her identity behind a computer. This anonymity makes it easier for the offender to strike blows against a victim without having to see the victim’s physical response. The distancing effect that technological devices have on today’s youth often leads them to say and do crueler things compared to what is typical in a traditional face-to-face bullying situation. A technological evolution.
As technology has evolved, bullying has proliferated. With the advent of the Internet, chat rooms soon followed. Online forums provided a communal breeding ground for youth to assault one another (Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008). Chat rooms were created by AOL instant messenger (AIM), and online communication program that allowed teens to spend hours talking to someone privately, one-on-one conversations or in public chat rooms. This exclusive forum allowed for youth to get together with select groups of friends and talk about the latest gossip. However, these portable communication devices did not become widespread, or make it into a majority of youth’s hands, until the appearance of the second generation of digital network phones in the 1990s. After that, they spread like wildfire. According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, 75% of 12-17 year-olds own cell phones, which increased from 45% in 2004 and one-in-three teens sends 3,000 text messages per month (Lenhart, 2010). Though many parents believe that they are purchasing a cell phone for their child for protective reasons, the opposite may be true as many youths admit to utilizing their phones as an instrument for cyberbullying.
Further progress on the Internet brought about more and more websites and with this came the advent of social media. The site MySpace is often considered the pioneer of social media. MySpace allows individual users to create their own unique profiles and interact in cyberspace with friends and foes alike. Bullying and Cyberbullying by Richard Donegan — 35 Online publication of personal information is dangerous because it allows many people to see a side of a person more often kept private in a face-to-face interaction. This vulnerability puts many teens in a position as either the victim or active offender partaking in cyberbullying actions. Social media sites, such as Facebook and Google+, are prone to abuses like cyberbullying.
Anonymous blogging is another technological advancement that has fostered cyberbullying activity and fueled ethical debate. According to their results, cyberbullying victimization rates have varied in the past few years, ranging between 18.8 percent in May 2007 and 28.7 percent in Nov. 2009 with a mean of 27.32 percent based on 7 different studies from May 2007-Feb. 2010. Cyberbullying offending rates have varied in a broader spectrum than victimization rates, ranging between 20.1 percent in June 2004 and 11.5 percent in Nov. 2009 with a mean of 16.76 percent based on 7 different studies from June 2004 to February 2010 (Hinduja & Patchin, 2010g, p. 1). Several specific types of victimization and cyberbullying were discovered through a survey taken in 2010. The survey discovered that the highest concentration of victimizations and cyberbullying offenses occurred in the following areas respectively: mean or hurtful comments posted online (14.3%, 8.8%), and rumors online (13.3%, 6.8%).
Cyberbullying can take a huge effect on a teenagers life in numerous ways,such as, lowering self esteem, increasing anxiety and depression, and producing feelings of being powerless. Among overweight teenagers, 61% have received mean or embarrassing posts online and 59% have received mean texts, e-mails or instant messages. (Anderson, Bresnahan, & Musatics, 2014). Because the NCVS ( National Crime Victimization Survey) data is weighted to the entire enrolled 9th-12th grade student population, it is estimated that 2.2 million teenagers have experienced cyberbullying in 2011. Of the 9% of students that have reported being cyberbullied in the NCVS compared to 6.2% in 2009.
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71.9% reported being cyberbullied once or twice in the school year
19.6% reported once or twice a month
5.3% reported once or twice a week
3.1% reported almost everyday
- 3.6% of students reported being cyberbullied with hurtful information on the internet
- 1.1% reported private information being purposely shared
- 1.9% reported unwanted contact via e-mail
- 2.7% reported unwanted contact via instant messaging
- 4.4% reported unwanted contact via text messaging
- 25% of teens on social media reported having an experience resulting in a face-to-face confrontation with someone.
- 13% reported concern about having to go to school the next day.
- 12% reported being called names they didn’t like via text messages.
- 11% received a text message from another student intended to hurt their feelings.
- 8 % reported having physical altercations with someone because of something that occurred on a social network site.
- 6%reported another student sending an instant message or chat to hurt their feelings.
- 4% reported having something put on a profile page to hurt their feelings.
- 3% reported receiving a nasty email from another student.
As of 2010, 8% of public schools reported that cyberbullying had occurred among students daily or at least once a week at school or away from school. Of the schools who reported having cyberbullying situations, 4% reported that the school environment was affected by cyberbullying. In 2011, 7.5 million (or more than 1/3) of all 20 million minors who actively used Facebook were younger than 13 and not technically permitted to use the site (Consumer Reports, 2011).
Among young Facebook users, more than 5 million were 10 years old and under, and their accounts were largely unsupervised by parents (Consumer Reports, 2011).
From 2010-2011, 1 million children reported being harassed, threatened, or subjected to other forms of cyberbullying on Facebook (Consumer Reports, 2011).
56% of kids admit someone has said mean or hurtful things to them online. More than 4 out of 10 say it has happened more than once (i-SAFE, 2004).
53% of kids admit having said something mean or hurtful to another person online. More than 1 in 3 have done it more than once (i-SAFE, 2004).
56% have not told their parents or an adult about something mean or hurtful that happened to them online (i-SAFE, 2004).
If you see someone getting bullied then you need to start making the effort to report the situation, if you feel like that is the right thing. Tell anyone you can to prevent any further issues. It is important to report it to the correct person because they know that they would be taking one less bully off of the internet.
It is everyday that people can have an impact on this issue by reporting the situation if they feel that someone is being bullied over the internet, if they feel that, that certain person is in an unsafe environment. I encourage everyone who is reading this to report any type of bullying if it outside the social media environment or if you see something that is threatening towards another person. Please make the right decision to help out the social media community to be used the right way. No life deserves to be taken because of a single comment or status.
This issue is important because the history behind social media bullying (cyberbullying) and the statistics that follow are very scary to some. The suicide rate has climbed knowing kids are able to say what they need to say over the internet. Kids who don’t understand the idea of social media should not be allowed to be on it, considering that the issue that comes with Facebook, MySpace, Snapchat, and instagram can be very harmful to someone or another. The solution to this issue should be to get help if you feel threatened or to report the issue if you see someone getting hurt over the internet. Don’t ever be afraid to stand up for what is right. According to their results, cyberbullying victimization rates have varied in the past few years, ranging between 18.8 percent in May 2007 and 28.7 percent in Nov. 2009 with a mean of 27.32 percent based on 7 different studies from May 2007-Feb. 2010.
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