Cyberbullying Essay Example
Cyberbullying is the term used for bullying behavior conducted by or involving electronic communication. Cyberbullying, in many ways, affects children and youth fiercely. Children have access to technologies from an increasingly early age that enable digital communication in the social groups they belong to at school or other childhood institutions.
However, this access also reaches beyond the schools and institutions and allows children to communicate digitally with a more comprehensive network of children in and beyond their local communications. This entry examines the development of cyberbullying, research on cyberbullying, how it compares to bullying in the material world, and prevention and intervention strategies.
The Development of Cyberbullying
The digital platforms available to children make it possible to send and share text messages, pictures and videos and to disseminate rapid responses to each other’s uploads. Technologies constantly develop new opportunities for communication and dissemination, and in so doing, also incite new forms of access to the more or less public expression of reactions to the pictures, messages, and videos of other children. the net furthermore enables anonymous communication of such material and reactions. As a result, practices of bullying tend to thrive in ways that entangle digital and analog practices of relating.
Cyberbullying may involve humiliating, ridiculing, exposing vulnerabilities and revealing secrets shared in confidence. Cyberbullying also may involve posing threats, sometimes even death threats or suggestions that the recipient commit suicide. It may involve shaming or insulting other children. When digital communication is involved, the means of bullying expand.
Cyberbullying Research
Cyberbullying emerged as a field of research around 2004 and a range of different definitions have since been developed. Many of these definitions are in keeping with the approach to bullying first developed in the 1970s. This tradition emphasizes particular personality traits of individual children, as well as their repetitive patterns of behavior. The focus here is on bullies, victims and bystanders as relatively stable positions and on the intent of the bully or bullies to hurt others and inflict harm.
Bullying Versus Cyberbullying
The effects of cyberbullying and of analog bullying have much in common; these effects include depression, low self-esteem, fear, vulnerability, loneliness, psychosomatic symptoms and in some cases even suicidal ideation, to mention but some of the possible consequences of cyberbullying for targeted children. Some studies find the effects magnified due to the child not being able to escape the bullying.
The uncertainty about who and how many people are involved in the hostile activities also tends to increase the negative effects.
Cyberbullying may just as analog bullying does, affect children’s academic performance and school-related well-being. Victims can lose concentration and their motivation for schoolwork. They may avoid school and find themselves isolated in relation to school activities.
In 2016, the international Health Behavior in School-Aged Children study, which reported on the health and well-being of 11 to 15 years old children, reported that they were bullied several times a week via messaging apps, wall-postings, emails, text messages, or a website. The Health Behavior in School-Aged Children study reported data from 42 countries, and results showed some variation across countries.
The study concludes that there are clear and significant cross-national variations in levels of digital bullying perpetration and victimization, and that the findings suggest that bullying levels are affected by factors such as cultural norms, socioeconomic levels, and the success of intervention and prevention programs in schools.
Prevention of Cyberbullying
In terms of prevention, cyberbullying is a complicated phenomenon because much online activity among children and adults happens in today’s life. Children are found themselves as victims of cyberbullying because much activities happen in spaces distant from parents, teachers and other responsible adults.
Children experiencing cyberbullying often consider it futile to involve adults due to their lack of insight into the complicated nature of this kind of digital communication. Nevertheless, researchers have suggested a range of actions to intervene in cyberbullying.
The Health Behavior in School-Aged Children study, for example, points to holistic school policies addressing cyberbullying and prevention strategies for particular kinds of student computer use and proposes that both students and teachers should receive training to help them understand what constitutes cyberbullying.
Conclusion
Rather than viewing problems as individual and personal, the focus should be on the school environment and on how to develop a more caring and respectful environment capable of also facilitating a transfer of an ethic of care across analog and digital communication, social relating and building of communities.
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