BEL 120 - ASSIGNMENT 6 (CYBER BULLYING)

CYBER BULLYING 

       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 has to have a minor on both sides, or at least have been instigated by a minor against another minor. Once adults become involved, it is plain and simple cyber-harassment or cyber stalking. Adult cyber-harassment or cyber stalking is never called cyber bullying. There are two kinds of cyber bullying direct attacks and cyber bullying by proxy. Because cyber bullying by proxy often gets adults involved in the harassment, it is much more dangerous.

        Direct attack of cyber bullying may come from messaging, mails, blogs, stealing passwords, and impersonation. For messaging, kids may send hateful or threatening messages to other kids, without realizing that while not said in real life, unkind or threatening messages are hurtful and very serious. Another example are text wars or text attacks are when kids gang up on the victim, sending thousands of text-messages to the victim's cell phone or other mobile device. The victim is then faced with a huge cell phone bill and angry parents and also kids send death threats using IM and text-messaging as well as photos or videos. 

        While cyber bullying by proxy that is using others to help cyber bully the victim, either with or without the accomplice's knowledge. Cyberbullying by proxy is when a cyber bully gets someone else to do their dirty work. Most of the time they are unwitting accomplices and don't know that they are being used by the cyber bully. Cyber bullying by proxy is the most dangerous kind of cyber bullying because it often gets adults involved in the harassment and people who do not know they are dealing with a kid or someone they know.

         When it comes to cyber bullying, they are often motivated by anger, revenge or frustration. Sometimes they do it for entertainment or because they are bored and have too much time on their hands and too many tech toys available to them. Many do it for laughs or to get a reaction. Some do it by accident, and either send a message to the wrong recipient or didn't think before they did something. The Power-hungry do it to torment others and for their ego. Revenge of the nerd may start out defending themselves from traditional bullying only to find that they enjoy being the tough guy or gal. Mean girls do it to help bolster or remind people of their own social standing. And some think they are righting wrong and standing up for others.

        This cyber bullying must to stop right now! How to stop it when it's start? Educated the kids and teaching them to respect others and to take a stand against bullying of all kinds helps too. Because their motives differ, the solutions and responses to each type of cyber bullying incident has to differ too. Unfortunately, there is no "one size fits all" when cyber bullying is concerned. Only two of the types of cyber bullies have something in common with the traditional schoolyard bully. Experts who understand schoolyard bullying often misunderstand cyber bullying, thinking it is just another method of bullying. But the motives and the nature of cyber communications, as well as the demographic and profile of a cyber bully differ from their offline counterpart. Parents need to be the one trusted place kids can go when things go wrong online and offline. Yet they often are the one place kids avoid when things go wrong online

        Education can help considerably in preventing and dealing with the consequences of cyber bullying. The first place to begin an education campaign is with the kids and teens themselves. We need to address ways they can become inadvertent cyber bullies, how to be accountable for their actions and not to stand by and allow bullying to be acceptable. We need to teach them not to ignore the pain of others. But we need to recognize that few cyber bullying campaigns can succeed without the complacency and the often help of other kids. If we can help kids understand how much bullying hurts, how in many cases words can hurt you, fewer may cooperate with the cyber bullies. They will think twice before forwarding a hurtful e-mail, or visiting a cyber bullying “vote for the fat girl” site, or allowing others to take videos or cell phone pictures of personal moments or compromising poses of others.

        We need to teach our children that silence, when others are being hurt, is not acceptable. If they don’t allow the cyber bullies to use them to embarrass or torment others, cyber bullying will quickly stop. It’s a tall task, but a noble goal. And in the end, our children will be safer online and offline. We will have helped create a generation of good cyber citizens, controlling the technology instead of being controlled by it.