Teenagers are an extremely sensitive population. They are associated with a variety of issues especially due to the changes in hormones and transition from childhood to adulthood. Bullying is a common practice among teenagers. It entails a form of violent behaviour against an individual with an aim of harassing.
Cyberbullying on the other hand entails the use of information and communication technologies in an attempt to perpetrate deliberate and hostile behaviour in a repeated manner. It could be done by an individual or group of people with the main aim of causing harm to the victim.
Cyberbullying has become a very common practice among individuals, especially the young generation. Some of the feelings related to cyberbullying include sadness and anxiety; hurt feelings towards others, depression and other mental health problems, inability to trust in other people, low self-esteem, lack of confidence and sense of security, frustrations, fear and anger, formation of prejudice for instance based on the race or religion of the cyberbully among others.
To some extent, cyberbullying may result in other major effects especially when the negative emotions in the victim are not dealt with in an appropriate manner.
Some of the behaviours include poor academic performance, inability to form healthy social relationships with peers and older people, withdrawal and seclusion from various life issues and developing an attitude to bully others as a form of revenge or to feel in control.
To the extreme, cyberbullying is deemed to cause deaths of teenagers through suicide where they feel they cannot take it any more. This therefore shows that cyberbullying affects an individual emotionally and should always be avoided where possible.
Research shows that cyberbullying is more detrimental than face-to-face bullying. Some of the reasons behind this include the fact that the effect is more permanent. This is so because the insults or comments used in bullying an individual could be preserved by the victim or others and the victim could view them time after time making the issue even more painful. There is also the issue of audience size.
Through the internet or social networks, the audience that can access the bullying message could be relatively big causing a lot of humiliation to the victim. Speed is also a critical issue. In cyberbullying, harmful materials intended for a certain target could spread very fast and reach many people hence increasing the source of intimidation and humiliation. Familiarity is also a concept that makes cyberbullying incredibly detrimental as compared to face-to-face bullying.
The fact that most teenagers know the individuals who cyberbully them plays a great part in raising the level or degree of humiliation and embarrassment to the target. Social networking has also contributed greatly to the issue of cyberbullying especially in making it more harmful as compared to face-to-face bullying.
Social networking sites for example Facebook facilitate cyberbullying as the cyber bullies are in a position to perpetrate campaigns against an individual with support of other members. In most cases, face-to-face bullying only involves the bully and the target and it is relatively easier to handle and forget as opposed to cyberbullying. This is enough justification that cyberbullying is more harmful as compared to traditional bullying.
Farrell (2004) asserts that cyberbullying has a high likelihood of affecting the victims adversely as compared to the traditional face-to-face bullying experience. To support this argument, the author suggests that children and teenage victims of online or cyber abuse feel that they have no place to hide their embarrassment especially due to the fact that it involves a lot of people, not only the cyberbully and the victim but also other people who could be in the networks.
There is also no chance of striking back against the cyber bully as it could be in a face-to-face encounter. This therefore makes the experience more intimidating. Cyberbullying has been experienced by many children of the school-going age and the phenomenon seems to be on the rise.
Various research have revealed that even though face-to-face bullying have been deemed to have long-term damaging effects to the victims, it is also true that cyberbullying could have even more damaging consequences especially due to the presence of a big audience and the inability of the victim to fight back and release the feelings or emotions experienced out of the bullying activity.
This is according to Marilyn Campbell, a researcher at Queensland University of Technology. This reinforces the statement that cyberbullying is more detrimental than traditional face-to-face bullying.
There are steps that should be taken once an individual discovers that a child or teenager is suffering from cyberbullying. Having seen all the above negative effects that are associated with cyberbullying, it is advisable that parents or caregivers be keener to recognize any of the behaviour in their children.
Once you suspect or notice some problems, it is recommended that one talk to the child to ensure that they are not badly affected. This could be through assuring them of your concern and support. Open dialogue plays a great role in cyber safety.
In case the offences against the child are serious and deemed harmful; one should make it known to the school authority or local law enforcement agency for further action. Any online evidence should be kept intact to guide in taking informed action upon the cyberbully.
It is also a good act to contact the medium through which cyberbullying is perpetrated. This could include aspects such as mobile phone providers, websites or social networks as they are in a position to either prevent or stop these behaviours. This shows that even though cyberbullying may seem inevitable, there exist some ways through which it could be controlled or avoided.
From the above discussion, it is evident that the concept of bullying is a reality that has affected a majority of young people in one way or the other. Cyberbullying seems to be extremely detrimental as compared to traditional or rather face-to-face bullying.
This is so because of the nature of consequences associated with it for instance permanence, audience size, familiarity, popularity of social networking as well as speed through which it is perpetrated among others. It is also clear that emotional effects suffered by an individual as a result of cyberbullying can be very devastating and affect him or her for a long period of time, some for a lifetime. This does not however mean that traditional face-to-face bullying is not harmful.
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