Research

1st LOI - Types of Cyberbullying

What is bullying? 

Bullying is unwanted aggression among children that involves a power imbalance. The behavior is repeated or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Both kids who are bullied and who bully others may have serious problems. 

What is cyberbullying? 

Cyberbullying is bullying with the use of digital technologies. It can take place on social media, messaging platforms, gaming platforms, and mobile phones. It is repeated behavior, and its purpose is to scare, anger, or shame those who are targeted. 

There are 10 main types of cyberbullying  

Exclusion: The act of leaving someone out. It happens sometimes with–a person bullying when excluding the person who ends out being a victim when playing. It can also happen online in group chats or just on social media in general. 

Harassment: This happens both ways in–person bullying and cyberbullying. It is the act of a constant pattern of hurtful, uncomfortable messages that makes people feel forced to do something that they do not want to do. It also can happen verbally when talking to someone. 

Outing or Doxing: This is an act of cyberbullying that reveals something personal about the victim without their consent. This can include sending embarrassing pictures of the victim on social media or their private documents or their saved private messages in social media or a group chat. This makes people feel very humiliated. 

Trickery: This can happen in both scenarios, in–person bullying and cyberbullying. This happens when the bully befriends the victim and later abuses their power and betrays their so-called  “Friend” by sharing their secrets and confidential information with other people. This can also happen online in a group chat. This leads to the victim having trust issues and feeling very humiliated. 

Cyberstalking: This can happen in both ways, in-person bullying and cyberbullying. This is a serious form of cyberbullying that can lead to threats of physical harm to the victim who is most likely to be a child. It can include monitoring, false accusations, threats, and sometimes offline stalking. It is a crime and can even result in jail time. 

Framing: This is an act of cyberbullying which is when the bully uses the victim’s account to post inappropriate content with their name. It can be harmless when friends write funny posts on each other’s profiles but has the potential to be incredibly harmful. For example, a bully posts racist/homophobic posts through someone else’s profile to ruin their reputation. 

Masquerading: This is an act of cyberbullying and this happens when a bully creates a fake profile or identity online to cyber bully someone. This could involve creating a fake email account, a fake social media profile, and faking a new identity and photos to fool the victim. In these cases, the bully tends to be someone the victim knows quite well. 

Dissing: This can go both ways, in-person bullying or cyberbullying. It is the act of a bully spreading cruel information about their victim through public posts or private messages to either ruin their reputation or relationships with other people. In these situations, the bully tends to have a personal relationship with the victim or, a friend. 

Trolling: This can be an act of cyberbullying which is when a bully will try to intentionally upset others by posting comments online to provoke the victim. Trolling is not always a form of cyberbullying, but it can be used as a tool to cyberbully when done with harmful intentions. These bullies tend to be more distant from their victims and do not have a personal relationship. 

Flaming: This type of cyberbullying consists of posting about or sending insults and swears to their target. Flaming is like trolling but will usually be a more direct attack on a victim to influence them to take part in online fights. 

2nd LOI - Causes of Cyberbullying

The reason for cyberbullying isn't really confirmed, there is really no reason why people cyberbully, but the most possible reason is to make themselves look stronger and more powerful from the victim's perspective. Imagine it like a kid and an adult, the kid should do what the adults tell them to so the adult is more powerful and if they can get intimidating. The cyberbully also may want to boost their confidence to get attention online and get revenge.  

Lack Of Consequences: 

In some cases, cyberbullying may not result in any rare consequences for the antagonist (bully), which can make them more likely to continue looking down and bullying others. For example, if someone posts hurtful comments on social media and does not get caught, they may feel encouraged to continue doing it. 

Showing Inappropriate content:

Showing inappropriate content can lead to many negative things. The victim can also get blamed/framed for looking at inappropriate content. At a young age, they can get depression or anxiety and be scared to go online. This might lead to trauma when they are older.  

Anonymity:

The people using the internet can go anonymous to hurt their victims without getting caught. They usually post negative comments on other people’s pictures, videos, or texts. A part of anonymity is creating a fake account and using a nickname that isn’t understandable. This can be a type of cyberbullying which is called masquerading. Masquerading is a type of cyberbullying where the bully creates a fake profile and sends mean and hurtful things to their victim. They could also post rumors about their victim, and they could ruin their victim. A lot of times, it happens to be a person that the victim knows quite well.

Learned Behavior:

Some people may learn to take part in cyberbullying from looks, family members, or media influences. For example, if a child grows up in a home where bullying behavior is normal. They may be more likely to bully people themselves. If a person sees others finding joy in bullying others, they will most likely do it themselves. 

Mental Health Issues: 

People who get cyberbullied can get mental health issues. Such as anger issues, depression, and anxiety. Some people who cyberbully themselves also may have mental health issues. For example, a person who is feeling depressed may cyberbully others to get over their negative emotions.  

Social dynamics: 

Cyberbullying can be a way for people to feel more power over others, in situations where they think popularity is important. For example, a group of popular people would target less popular people to get attention from other people.  

3rd LOI - Impacts of Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying has a lot of huge consequences. At first, it might be hard to notice as people try to hide it, but over time you will notice a significant difference in that victim’s life. The impact of cyberbullying includes a few categories which are physical, mental, and behavioral impacts.  

Physical impacts: Although you might not really consider physical impacts as an effect of cyberbullying, it is a severe problem as it can affect their performance or their health. Extremely high stress and anxiety can result in physical changes like insomnia, stomach issues, and even eating disorders (ED). A lot of these can be from hurtful comments about size or even your weight. Sometimes at night you suddenly think of all the sad things people say to you that make you unable to sleep at night. All these can have an impact on your physical health as you need sleep and energy to continue a normal and healthy lifestyle. 

Mental Issues: People think that the mental impact is more of a big problem because it hurts people mentally which can cause; low self-esteem, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, and depression or anxiety. It might be hard to notice, just like cyberbullying in general, but it will get more obvious over time because you will see some changes in your mindset. Most of the time, they will not tell anyone about their situation and just hope that over time cyberbullying will get less severe. But as we know, cyberbullying has its consequences, and it really is a severe problem because most of us are unfamiliar with just how much damage it can cause to an innocent person. 

Behavioral Issues: The behavioral issues are quite noticeable, but it is just very sudden. When people get cyberbullied, they might have changes in their behavior, A decrease in their academic performance, losing focus/easily distracted, frequently absent, loss of interest in activities they enjoy, change their circle of friends, become distant, lock themselves in their room more often, becoming quieter, avoid using their devices, mood swings, and thinking about suicide. Although the desire to suicide is quite extreme, a study done in September 2018 in the U.S.A discovered that victims of cyberbullying are twice more likely to attempt suicide. The data also shows that 59% of the teens in the U.S.A have been bullied before (cyberbullying or bullying) it also shows that 90% of people think that cyberbullying is a huge problem.) 

What is the difference between cyberbullying and in–person bullying? 

Bullying is the verbal, emotional, and physical abuse of a person by another person. When bullying, you could tell a person you trust or stand up for yourself. 

Cyberbullying is a type of bullying that is done using devices such as phones, tablets, etc. In cyberbullying, you must change your phone number and block so many people, but still, they could still text you by finding out the new phone number. 

While cyberbullying and bullying both cause a lot of damage, cyberbullying has more of a long–term effect. It also damages the victim more than bullying in person. Bullying only happens usually in public places (mostly schools) and you still can be at peace in the comfort of your own home, but cyberbullying happens everywhere and you cannot even find comfort in your own home, you cannot escape all the bullying.