Cyberbullying: The Biggest Problem In Middle School

Bullying can happen in any number of places, contexts, or locations. Sometimes that place is online or through a cell phone. Bullying that occurs using technology (including but not limited to phones, email, chat rooms, instant messaging, and online posts) is considered electronic bullying and is viewed as a context or

Small minds. Not conscious of their future. Not aware that posting, and commenting online can lead to big problems. Cyberbullying is more detrimental to middle school girls because their immature minds do not consider the long-term consequences of their short-term behavior.

Bullying by definition is a form of aggressive behavior in which someone intentionally and repeatedly causes another person injury or discomfort. Bullying can take the form of physical contact, words or more subtle actions. [Why] Bullying has grown new outlets over the last decade. With social media outlets and text messaging added to the game, bullying is not just about getting tormented face to face anymore. Cyber bullying can include sending out mean or threatening emails and instant messages about a person, spreading rumors about someone and also include photos that a person would consider to be humiliating. [Chamberlin] Bullying can have many outlets. The most common form of bullying is still face to face confrontation. But

Bullying comes in many different forms, physical, mental, verbal, cyber relational. But the most common type of bullying is cyber bullying. Bullying is identified as a rude or hurtful action that is repeatedly acted upon another thing. In the article ‘Bullying Statistics’ it states, “About 42 percent of kids have been bullied while online with one in four being verbally attacked more than once.” This shows that too many kids have been bullied, just online.

However, before speaking on whether cyber bullying should be, proceed off school campus, one should ask one question. What exactly is cyber bullying? Well based on source A, cyber bullying is where a child, or teen tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted by another child, by the internet, interactive and digital technologies or mobile phones. After reading this, most of our eyes have been open to the fact how bad cyber bullying is. However, many are still saying that cyber bullying will never stop and

Bullying is the act of using superior strength or influence to intimidate someone, usually forcing someone to do something they want against the others will. In the United States, "since 2014, statistics show that 19.6% of high school students are being bullied, only sixty-four percent who were being bullied did not report it, where as thirty-six percent did," (PACERS). Since 2010, the reason behind most students being bullied, is associated with appearance, body shape, and race. Statistics show that there is a decent amount of students that are victims to being bullied, however how much do schools intervene and try and stop the situation? Plus, should schools even bother to try and intervene with the situations that are arising?

As the number of teenagers logged into social media accounts increases the number of opportunities to perpetrate or be the victim of cyberbullying also increases. A few of the main outlets for cyberbullying are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, instant messenger, or text messages. The term bullying has been a staple in the English language for centuries, but cyberbullying is a fairly new term. Roberto, Eden, Savage, Ramos-Salazar, and Deiss (2014) reported that 74% of teenagers have an account on at least one social media site, but all social media site require a minimum age of 13 years old. In reality, 7.5 million Facebook accounts are operated by someone under 13 years old, and 5 million accounts are operated by a child under the age of 10 (Roberto et al., 2010).

Currently there are several formats of bullying in the society. Bullying is repeated verbal, physical, social or psychological behaviour that is harmful and involves the misuse of power by an individual or group towards one or more persons. (NSW Public Schools, n.d.) "Cyber bullying" is that bullying that uses electronic devices such as mobile phones and laptops or Internet to intentionally harass people or being aggressive with verbal abuse. Most of cyber bullying occurs through messages, SNS (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) and random chatting sites. And the reason is because in Internet or website,

When thinking of bullying, most people tend to think about the original form, where the bully harasses the victim in person; but, in this generation, cyberbullying is a new form of harassment that goes beyond the schoolyard. This way, individuals can be bullied all day and any day, but when you ask teens today, 81% of them think it is funny. (NPC) This shows that most teens do not think of cyberbullying as much of a threat, even though the rate in has gone up. In 2008–2009, the School Crime Supplement indicates that 6% of students in grades 6–12 experienced cyberbullying. (Stop Bullying) Six percent of the student body has been abused over the internet and they may be struggling with depression and thought of suicide go higher, from two to nine times more (Do Something). The National Crime Prevention Council announced cyber-bullying as “a problem that affects almost half of all American teens.” The effects of cyberbullying are increasing and going from depression to suicide. Cyberbullying should be more widely known because its prevalence is increasing, anyone can be a target, and school and parents should be monitoring the children’s online behavior.

Cyber bullying has been a fast-growing problem. It affects many children, but I would primarily be focusing on how it affects middle adolescence social behaviors. Cyber Bullying occurs in the digital realm and affects the adolescence at astonishing rates. It is considered a new branch of bullying. Though cyber bullying you cannot physically hurt someone, merely you can hurt the adolescence feelings and emotions, which in turn breaks up their social behaviors. Cyberbullying has become a main issue because adolescences are using the Internet and social media more at this age. They are spending countless amount of hours on the Internet. (Mishna, F., Saini, M., & Solomon, S., 2009) Although cyber bullying is done through digital devices, most of the times the children know each other and have some contact. For that reason, their social health gets affected. (Gofin, R., & Avitzour, M., 2012) They fear to attend school, or go to places where they know their perpetrator will be at. An American study in the year 2007 reported 17% of victims of cyberbullying and 18% cyberbullies at a school. For a particular school, it is something that has to be considered. (Walrave & Heirman, 2011) Due to cyberbullying being a recent concern there are not a lot of prevention programs where adolescence can go search for help. It is important to understand why cyber bullying is happening amongst middle adolescence, and how should

One key area parents and educators need to focus on is the pervasiveness of cyberbullying. Gable, Van Acker, and Snakenborg mention how some schools have made an effort to try and put a stop to cyberbullying by stating, “A Prevention Curriculum is an eight-session curriculum designed for students in Grades” (92). Although, throughout the past couple years, schools have encouraged nationwide discussions about cyberbullying, the overwhelming reality has shown little to no improvement when it comes to children and digital aggression. Cyberbullying can be very harmful to the youth. It can lead to depression, anxiety and sometimes even suicide. Once something is publicized on the internet, it will never vanish and can even reappear at times renewing the pain of cyberbullying. Today, many bullies are refraining from physical bullying, but instead are choosing to bully using Snapchat, Facebook, instant messaging, and other online modes of communication. Although cyber bullying does not have the same obvious signs that physical bullying has, it can be as damaging or more in the long term.

For a long time, physical bullying has been a constant problem for young people attending school. Now that more and more young people are using the Internet and social networks, bullying as also become an online problem as well as in the schools. Boyd defines social networks as web-based services that allow individuals to “(1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (Boyd 2007). Some of the most popular social networking sites that are used are Facebook, MySpace, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Tumblr, just to name a few. When individuals are bullied over social networks it then becomes known as cyberbullying. “Cyberbullying has been defined as the intentional and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, or other electronic devices” (Patchin and Hinduja, 2010). Mobile phone and computer usage have become extremely popular amongst todays children and so its easy for young people to misuse the technology to bully.

Cyber bullying is quite different from the old traditional bullying. The traditional bullying has a combination of physical abuse, verbal abuse, and emotional abuse. While in cyber bullying it would just be emotional and verbal abuse because the person being bullied doesn’t get physically hurt. The traditional bullying would be face to face usually on school grounds during the school day, and it would have a smaller audience. Cyber bullying is at school and at home, all day, everyday either by the form of a text message, or chat room, or on social networking websites, and it has a large audience, for example if somebody posted on your wall on facebook everybody can see it and then people will comment and it will be a lot of people.

First, a 2010 study shows that “one in five middle schoolers have been affected by cyberbullying through phones or a computer”(Ganda). Meaning a lot of middle schoolers have gone through cyberbullying. Cyberbullying affects everyday life and that involves school . Most students go to school with their bully and most are even to scared to go to school to face their bully or bullies with the torment they get alone from a bully or bullies a student can be so scared to face the bully at school they end up skipping or not going to school at all . When a student isn’t going to school they’re missing great life lessons and are missing school work. Which means their grades start to slip and they eventually end up feeling hopeless, stuck on what do and confused wondering if school is really worth it. They can also be scared to be targeted which can make a student not want to go to school even more because they get bullied in person and every time they log on to the internet. Meaning the student misses the education they need to be successful in life and to be able to go to college and start a life of their own. Schools must get involved with cyberbullying to create safe environments for their students.

The definition of bullying, according to Webster Dictionary is the “abuse and mistreatment of someone vulnerable by someone stronger, more powerful, etc.” ("Bullying." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 18 May 2017.) There are various types of bullying such as cyber, social, physical, and verbal. What are the differences between these types? Cyberbullying is using electronic devices to bully. These include cell phones, tablets, and computers while using social media, text messaging, and websites. For instance, sending messages or even commenting harsh words, posting an embarrassing photograph or video on social media, Twitter or Instagram, is cyberbullying .These statistics focus on enrolled students in the 9th-12th grade. “71.9% reported (students) being cyberbullied once or twice in the school year. 19.6% reported once or twice a month.