Bullying has always been around, and in my opinion it was easy to keep an eye on it and control it, if parents, schools and teachers worked together. Unfortunately with the introduction of internet and rise of social media platforms, a new kind of bullying, called cyber bullying was created, which is much more damaging and harder to control than the regular bullying.
Cyber bullying has become very common, and I have seen fully grown adults being brought to tears, and being severely affected, and subsequently damaging their mental health. Can we imagine how it effects a young person who maybe targeted or signaled out to be bullied online. As there are more and more online platforms to communicate, similarly there are more areas to cyberbully someone, and in majority of cases the bully benefits, and chooses to be anonymous, the bully can only be one person, but they can assume different identities, and bully one person, making it more intense and damaging to the victim.
Effects of cyber bullying are far reaching and dangerous. Victims can suffer from, anxiety, depression, loneliness and suicidal ideation (Nixon, 2014). Constant and long term cyber bullying can damage the mental health of the victim so much, that they start believing, that somehow they deserve to be bullied, and thus it can have long term effects on a young person’s self-esteem, and confidence. I think a lot more that needs to be done, not only to combat the incidence of cyber bullying, but we also need to make it easier for the kids to report it, so they could be helped in a timely manner, before it effects their mental health.
Nixon C. L. (2014). Current perspectives: the impact of cyberbullying on adolescent health. Adolescent health, medicine and therapeutics, 5, 143–158. https://doi.org/10.2147/AHMT.S36456