Ms. Valent

Interview with Ms. Valent, a psychologist 

This interview took place on Sunday, May 16, 2023.

1. Q: Can you share your experience with cyberbullying?

A: "I think it's 2 clients that experience cyberbullying. One of them is my friend, she is a TikTok influencer and she gets bullied because of her physics. It makes her insecure about herself, she gets scared to open her account. The second one is in junior high school, she gets bullied a lot on the internet and school."

2. Q: How do you help students who are dealing with cyberbullying?

A: "I listen to their stories, how they feel, what is the impact on them. The first thing that you can do if you helping somebody that got cyberbullied is to be a good listener"

3. Q: What are the main causes of cyberbullying?

A: "There is a lot of reasons of cyberbullying. I will say 3 reasons. First is parenting, usually the way they are parenting their kid, it affects the way the kid develops. Secondly, the person who is cyberbullying never gets any attention in real life so they are brave enough to cyberbully others because they love getting attention. Thirdly, they just hate the person."

4. Q: What is the impact of cyberbullying kids?

A: "The worse impact is trauma, because even though the person who bullied already said sorry. The bullying can cause trauma, they get insecure about their body and other stuff."

5. Q: Why do people prefer bullying online rather than offline?

A: "They can be anything they want, they can be another person or a neighbor, they basically can be anonymous."

6. Q: At what age is social media appropriate and why? 

A: "It's better if you're 18 if you want to have TikTok, you can get a lot of information and false information from TikTok. I think it's alright if you're 13 to have Instagram because it's more based on your daily life. Twitter is also 18 years, 13 years old still can't have Twitter in my opinion." 

7. Q: What can we do to prevent cyberbullying?

A: "Don't be a bystander. If you don't want to be a bystander, then confront the bully privately. Tell them that this is not good, be nice"

8. Q: Is there a good side to cyberbullying?

A: "There is no good side to cyberbullying"