Is Cyberbullying Worse Than Traditional Bullying?

The world today is on a platform of heightened technological stimulus, that unfortunately have incredibly negative affects on people’s lives especially throughout the bullying culture that has sprouted from this stimulus. Bullying has rapidly increased since the introduction of multimedia cell phones in the 90’s. Cyberbullying is the current problem and an issue that will continue to be current until we as a society stop it. There is a distinction between traditional bullying and cyberbullying and its effects are different as well. Cyberbullying has its own societal norms and its own exclusive factions. Exclusive groups that support and encourage bullying behavior, because it’s seen as a norm. Digital harassment has evolved alongside technology, to the point that the issue is uncontrollable and extremely accessible; the web has created anonymous identities to those who harass now have become untraceable. Bullying is influenced by internal emotions, social factors, and the accessibility of other’s information. Although, cyberbullying is extremely prevalent there is no federal law for cyberbullying. There should be change to societal standards and harassing should be seen as a severe issue, not simply general school behavior.

The word 'bullying' has developed a very traditional definition amongst society: a face-to-face interaction involving either verbal abuse and/or physical abuse. With the technological advances that have occurred within the past 15 years, bullying has become anything but traditional. Children and teens have more access to the Internet and to social media platforms more than ever before, thus allowing them to avoid face-to-face interaction. Within the past 15 years, there has been a significant rise of cyberbullying in the youth demographic (ages 12-18) (Slonje, Smith, & Frisén, 2013). In order to understand what the difference between traditional bullying and cyberbullying is, one must familiarize themselves with the definition of cyberbullying.

In 2014, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) did a study on bullying and the found that 19.4% of all the students interviewed had been bullied at school. This may not seem very surprising, bullying has been going on for decades. Generations of men and women have come to fear the people who walk the halls, stealing lunch money from those weaker than them. However, it is interesting to note that 14.8% of that 19.4% had reported being cyber bullied. Unlike the standard physical bullying, cyberbullying is a slightly more recent development, but it has evolved to become much more deadly. It gives bullies a better tool for creating more widespread pain. The awareness for cyber bullying needs to increase and ultimately, cyberbullying needs to be abolished completely due to its destructive capabilities.

Cyberbullying is a relatively new threat, and it is very similar to traditional bullying. Despite the fact that cyberbullying and traditional bullying both share the common goal of harassment, cyberbullying differs from traditional bullying in that it does not stop at the schoolyard, and can continue when the victim is far away from the aggressor. It is just as devastating as common bullying, and sometimes is even more damaging. Professors Sameer Hinduja and Justin W. Patchin note in their journal, “Cyberbullying Creates Dangerous Stress and Anxiety”, that cyberbullying affects anywhere between 10-40% of students (contingent on their age group) (par. 1). J.D. Kelly A. Albin, in her article “Bullies in a Wired World”, defines cyberbullying as “…the ‘willful and repeated harm inflicted through use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices’” (157). It is caused by the fact that children feel their actions are mitigated when they use social media, as it creates the illusion of indirectness, and its effects range anywhere from mild depression to suicide.

Bullying has been around since the beginning of time. Parents may remember when they were kids and the bully would pick on them or their friends by stealing lunch money or just getting beat up, and that was the end of it. The victims remember the hurt, frustration, and sadness it caused. However, these days, bullying is not just happening on the playground or at the bus stop, it is happening on the Internet and on cell phones, making it possible to bully a child 24 hours a day with multiple bullies and thousands of kids watching. Cyberbullying follows children nonstop and into the safety of their house. Sometimes kids are afraid to inform their parents about the cyberbullying that they will think its there fault. Or that their parents will call the bullies parents or other parents, making the bullying worse. However, the effect and pain that comes from cyberbullying is real. People underestimate cyberbullying, just because it is happening online and not in person. Cyberbullying can lead to many different factors like drinking, and drugs, poor grades, depression, eating disorders. Many students have even taken their own lives because of another student saying something to them online. Cyberbullying has been taking place a lot more in middle and high schools because of the increased usage of social media networks and technology. Cyberbullying is worse and more harmful than traditional bullying.

This research shows that cyberbullying is at an all-time high over the past few years. The purpose of this report was to gain knowledge for personally and professionally for the future as well as to use for reporting. With the rise of children and teenagers getting cell phones, tablets, and even computers at such a young age the rise will only continue to go up if we cannot stop it now. Young girls are at a higher risk than young men to be bullied but young men are higher for being bullies. Every one in three teens have been the victims of cyber bullying and only one in five are reported to parents or law enforcement. If there was something that could be done to stop cyberbullying

The truth of the matter is, cyberbullying is a major problem in our country. However, not all hope is lost. As of August 2015, bullying has been made illegal in all 50 states, so it is only a matter of time until people start to crack down on cyberbullying. But more people need to do the right thing by preventing it however they

Cyberbullying is the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages in an threatening nature or tearing down an individuals character based on religion, gender, ethnicity, or disability. In terms of effects overall, cyberbullying has increased the use of communication via technology and has become more common among teenagers (Cabral 3). Technology has made it easy for bullies to find individuals via social media in the privacy of their on own homes., which has allowed them to express how they feel anonomously. This has become an issue that is occurring more and more in High Schools and Middle Schools across America. One of the biggest discussions when dealing with bullying and cyber-bullying would be how do we stop this epidemic to save the soul of our youth? Education is key, we have to educate one another on the effects of bullying to know that this is real and affects so many people to this day. Much of cyberbullying is the

Cyberbullying is just one of the many forms of bullying that can occur and unfortunately, it continues to occur in ever-growing amounts. In this generation, the internet is so easily accessible that no one can prevent themselves from potentially being entrapped by the heinous claws of cyberbullying. Since cyberbullying can reach so many people, it can also bring the detrimental effects along with it. Mental illness, self-harm, and suicide are just a few of the effects that can happen to a person being cyberbullied. Most of the time these effects can be prevented by the intervention of schools, friends, or loved ones. Most cyberbullying incidents happen to students and in most cases, schools are unable to take any form of action. People, especially young Americans should speak up and take action against cyberbullying. They must voice their concerns and make schools be required to intervene in cyberbullying matters that occur off campus, because it can affect them, their friends, or others around

Cyberbullying is a way of bullying through technology to deliberately hurt others. Cyberbullying affects a lot of youth especially in this generation and country where technology is thriving. Cyberbullying has a direct effect on victims and can indirectly have an effect on the people around the victims. This isn't always the case because all victims are different in age and personality it can be broken up into two categories the victims that don’t take an emotion toll from the bullying and the ones that do, who develop self esteem issues and other behavioral issues. It’s a fact that in Australia three quarters of schools reported cyberbullying last year, which means that there is an entire classroom full of bullied students per school. Cyberbullying is a significant issue because the amount of youth getting bullied every year is growing and with getting

A study in the article “Is Cyberbully worse than Traditional Bullying” investigated the importance of medium (tradition vs. cyber), publicity (public vs. private), and bully’s anonymity (anonymous vs. not anonymous). The goal was to determine severity of hypothetical bullying scenarios among a sample of seventh and eighth graders. Participants were asked to rank a set of hypothetical bullying scenarios from the most severe to the least severe. Then, the scenarios were manipulated based on the aspect of medium and publicity, and the medium and anonymity.

Cyber bullying has increased since social media usage has gone up. Cyber bullying has no way of coming to an end. Kids do not have a place to go when they are being cyber bullied because social media is always around and some think that the only way to stop the bullying is suicid. “boys who were both bullies and victims of bullying had a higher likelihood of suicidal behavior as compared with those who did not exhibit bullying behaviors or who were only victims. For the girls, there was a different effect of bullying; girls who were victims of bullying were more likely to exhibit suicidal behaviors as compared to those who were neither bullies nor victims” (Campbell, Marilyn A). Cyber bullying is relentless and there is only so much some can take. They make movies about cyber bullying, the movie on Netflix called cyber bullying it highlighted what it was like to go weeks on end being bullied on social media was like and how the lead character had no way of stopping what was happening. Society has let this happen and has a front row seat to what is happening. During an interview a girl talked about how she had a friend that was cyber bullied during high school and that she went through a lot throughout the time it happened. She had to go to therapy overcome what had happened to her. These are the outcomes of cyber

Have you ever been cyber bullied? Do you know someone who has been cyber bullied? Do you understand how being cyber bullied feels? Can you imagine the amount of agony teenagers go through when they’re being cyber bullied? If you do, then you know that cyber bullying must be stopped! Cyber bullying can diminish a teen’s self-esteem, bring teens into depression, and worst of all cyber bullying can lead to teenagers committing suicide.

Making nick names by classmates, posting secret photos online by colleagues, or even being slandered by strangers, these common experiences are types of cyberbullying. Lots of people have such cyberbullying experiences because it occurs more frequently than before. More specifically, cyberbullying is the use of the Internet, cell phones, or other electronic communication devices to spread harmful or embarrassing information in the form of text, photos or videos about another person. Cyberbullying is worse than physical bullying because of its serious consequences, and the person who suffers the cyberbullying would be hurt mentally by harmful messages, which is more difficult to cure than physical injury.

While cyberbullying affects each child differently, there has been a clear correlation between victims and non-victims and their self-esteem. In one study, bullied victims had less self-esteem than those who were not bullied online. Additionally, it was reported that victims of cyberbullying were thirty percent more likely to think about committing suicide (Cyberbullying Research Center, 2012). With the lack of parent supervision, it was found that those who spent more than three hours per school day on social networks were 110% more at risk to be a cyberbully victim as compared those who do not spend as much time online (Gilkerson, 2012). What may be worse is the fact that majority of those bullied online do not tell their parents or an adult about what occurred. Despite the fact that most adolescents state that bullying occurs more offline then online, cyberbullying is still a real and large threat to the youth of America (Lenhart, 2007).