EMELIE OLSSON

Walking in someone else’s shoes

Nowadays cyberbullying has become more and more frequently in this society we are living in. Cyberbullying is way of abuse and can only take place online, on the Internet. The bullies are usually anonymous but can as well be well known by the victim. It depends on what sort of communication-chanel the bullies have used. It is common that the perpetrators use peer-pressure in order to make friends join to be bullies. The anonymity makes perpetrators more brave and it have an encouraging effect to expressing hurtful comments behind the screens. Sayings that would not have been said in the reality “face to face”.

The reasons why victims of cyberbullying are being attacked, often come from something someone have said or done that goes against the social norms. Sometimes it is all about jealousy. In the same way the attack can as well be about skin colors, religions, different lifestyles or even mental or physical inability. No matter how the bullying take place, each time it is going to hurt the victim in ways that create bad feelings and deep distress for instance.

In today’s technical society it is not a rare phenomenon that teenagers search for attention by different sorts of social medias. The most common place where cyberbullying take place is through e-mail, messages and “chatrooms” like Myspace, blogs and pictures and messages by mobile advices. Most of the he adolescents behave this way in order to get views on Youtube for instance, friends and popularity. It is strange how online bullying is more tolerated than offline bullying. In somehow online bullying is simply easier to tolerate. Therefore children do not tell their parents if they are being exposed in this way of abuse. Only 15 percent of the parents are aware about all this cyberbullying that is going on, surrounding the adolescents in the society these days.

One adult who is well known on the subject is Dr. Robin Kowalski, professor of psychology. She has come to the conclusion that emotional bullying often leaves heavy “baggage” with children. This is baggage that children are carrying for a long time in their lives and can be stressful. Emotional bullying leaves deep scars in the heart, compared with physical bullying where a scar heals by time. She has also come to a conclusion about who are the victims of the bullying. Those who has lowest self-esteem, depression and anxiety are that people. Why cyberbullying are considered as the most hurtful and worst way of bullying is because “regular” bullying usually causes physical and emotionally pain by the victim. By cyberbullying multiply tools are used in order to attack the victim. It often starts on the internet where offensive comments and sayings are being published about a person, and then it has been spread all over the internet. In the end it can all effect the victim’s relations with friends, among other. Why this problem escalates is because of the unlimited access of mobile advices in the teenager’s hands.

One consequence of the ability of anonymity is that the opportunity to be more and more indirect aggressive and promotes to more harassment. In statistic there are often more girls who use this method.

As a result of this society occupied with technology involving cyberbullying, it is almost impossible for parents to keep up. The parents often blame on the technology instead of the children’s behaviors, when talking about cyberbullying. There are some guidelines for parents to prevent cyberbullying from increasing. Deborah Temkin is an expert on cyberbullying and shared a few advices. She said an open communication between parents and children can provide cyberbullying in the future. As early as possible start talking about what consequences can be of online activity, even before facing cyberbullying. Temkin also mention it is truly important to make the child think one time extra to who the friends are and who the parents of the friend are. It is important to prepare the child of what he or she are getting herself or himself engaged into. Another prevailing advice providing cyberbullying according to Temkin is full access to the child’s online activity by the parents. By letting the child is of knowledge that the parent can check the mobile applications and online activity at any time, results in children are more carefully with what to post. The children also go easily to the parent if there is any problem or harassment. This active monitoring is one way to prevent and control the cyberbullying.

From the victim’s side there are methods to handle cyberbullying as well. Do not respond to comments and harassment, it is only going to make the situation worse. As a victim, try to collect evidence such as e-mails and messages. This could be useful if school or the police are being involved. If possible, try to find the perpetrators identity and what personal information he or she has got about the victim. It is not common that victims contact the police and the law to receive help. Children should show their parents their own personal contact information on the Internet to ensure that the online profile is not being too exposed.

There are young children around the world that committed suicide because they have been cyberbullied. This is a clear message, indicating that we surely should make adjustments about this cyber-world situation. There are some proposals of how we can help cyberbullying to decrease. One of them is an idea of flag hurtful messages before it is sent away. For example a box pops up before the message sends, saying “Do you really want to send this?” and then put the messages into different categories and mark them with flags if they considering as inappropriate or to hurtful. This can in order be seen as a bully- warning pop up.  Another idea is to help the victims that already are being harassed via cyberbullying. It is an idea that matches these people who have experienced same type of bullying. The meaning behind this idea is to help the victims to understand that they are not alone in this situation.

"Everyone has a piece of the puzzle. Industry can make safer online communities, young people can be educated better to deal with the issue, parents can offer better support rather than just banning their digital devices," says Mr Roberts.

Social Medias who have been much criticized are twitter and facebook. Twitter has been accused for not dealing with hate messages concerning racism, homophobic and sexism. To be real are these type of messages illegal in the UK. Twitter responded the accusation by the comment that there existing a “report tweet” function to use. Facebook has also been criticized for repeating upsetting activity, and they responded with a statement meaning that they “did not want interfere with users content”.

Cyberbulling is a more and more common amongst adolscents these days. Searching for attention is the most underlying reason behind this was of abuse from the bullies. Adolscents who break the social nroms or say or do something odd easily become victims of cyberbullying. Compared with bullying happening "face to face", cyberbullying is easier to get away with it as a bully. Emotional bullying often leaves heavy bagage with the victim. By using cyberbullying as a method of abuse there are multiply  tools to attack. The anonymity results in more indirect aggressive harassment. 

There has been a progress in guidelines in preventing this cyberbullying attacks. Guidelines for parents are to have an open communication with their child about consequences, an active monitoring and full access to the child's online activity. Guidelines for the victim are to not comment back to the harassments and try to collect evidence in case of contact with the police. Ideas of how to improve the open chat spaces are flag warnings and pop up warnings before sending messages if they are hurtful or inappropriate. 

Social medias as Twitter and Facebook are often confronted with not handling hurtful harassments and they usuallt do not want to interface the users activity, instead they refers to report buttons. In the future I hope that every parent understands and knows how to educate their chilldren to be safe on the internet by train their minds to do choose the right from the wrong. We can not assume that it always will be built in system in the social medias to prevent cyberbullying, it should be in the childrens' minds. Parents have a big role in this social society issue and need to be active and realize that the responsibilityy lays on their shoulders.

Sources:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/0/24955662
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo1rWtUy7pc
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26121199
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/international/2013/09/16/exp-preventing-cyberbullying.cnn