Here are some articles, news, and informative videos/graphics so you may be able
to understand the current stand of cyberbullying on students under the age of 18.
Here are some articles, news, and informative videos/graphics so you may be able
to understand the current stand of cyberbullying on students under the age of 18.
MANILA, 6 September 2019—One in three young people in 30 countries said they have been a victim of online bullying, with one in five saying they skipped school due to cyberbullying and violence, according to a new poll released today by UNICEF, the United Nations organization working for children’s rights.
In the Philippines, latest national data show that cyberviolence affects almost half of children aged 13-17. The prevalence of cyberviolence for males (44 per cent) is almost the same for females (43 per cent).
One-third of cyberviolence experienced by Filipino children are in the form of verbal abuse over the internet or cellphone, while a fourth are through sexual messages. More females received messages of sexual nature or content than males. However, twice as many males than females reported having their nude body or sexual activities, whether real or falsified, shown on the internet or cellphone
Violence against children, in all forms including online bullying or cyberbullying, has devastating effects on the physical and emotional wellbeing of young people. This can create lasting emotional and psychological scars, even physical harm. It is particularly challenging to address since children are vulnerable and have easy access to the internet, making them easy targets of online violence.
In the UNICEF U-Report poll conducted in June 2019, almost three-quarters of young people from 30 countries said that social networks including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter are the most common platforms for online bullying. Being connected online means that school no longer ends once a student leaves class, and neither does bullying.
The U-Report further revealed that 32 per cent believe that the government is mainly responsible in addressing online bullying, 31 per cent said that young people are responsible, while 29 per cent said internet companies. These show that opinions are equally divided on who should be responsible for ending online bullying – highlighting the need to involve children and young people in the shared responsibility.
UNICEF is calling for urgent action to implement policies that will protect children and young people from bullying – both online and offline. Addressing the problem requires action from all of us.
Establishing and equipping national helplines to support children and young people in reporting violence is a concrete step. Training teachers and parents to respond to and prevent bullying will ensure the safety of children and young people, particularly the most vulnerable ones.
Gathering better data about the online behavior of children and young people, and how criminals are using the internet, will guide policies and action plans.
UNICEF is also urging social media and social networking service companies to improve ethical standards and practices in collecting and managing information of children.
Every day, cyberbullying impacts kids all over the world. In fact, there is no question that this growing issue must be addressed. But to end online bullying, you must first understand why kids are doing it. Their motives for lashing out in cyberspace can run the gamut from anger and revenge to a longing to fit in.
Cyberbullies Are Out for Revenge
When kids have been bullied, they often seek revenge instead of coping with the situation in healthier ways. The motivation for these victims of bullying is to retaliate for the pain they have experienced.1 When this happens, these kids are often referred to as bully-victims.
Bully-victims feel justified in their actions because they, too, have been harassed and tormented.
These bully-victims want others to feel what they have felt and feel justified in doing so. By cyberbullying others, they also may feel a sense of relief and vindication for what they experienced. These kids will sometimes even go after their bully directly. Other times, they will target someone whom they perceive to be weaker or more vulnerable than them.
Cyberbullies Blame the Victim
Bullying often revolves around a person’s social status at school. Some kids will cyberbully others based on the school’s perceived social ladder. For instance, a mean girl might get cyberbullied by an anonymous group of girls who are hoping to bring her down a notch or two.
Or, a mean girl might cyberbully a classmate who excels academically because she is jealous of her success. Other times, a teen might cyberbully a peer because they believes the victim stole their romantic partner. Whatever the reason, kids sometimes feel their cyberbullying behaviors are warranted and deserved.1 Consequently, they usually do not feel remorse or guilt for cyberbullying.
Understanding the Mean Girl Phenomenon
Cyberbullies Are Bored
Kids who are bored and looking for entertainment will sometimes resort to cyberbullying to add some excitement and drama to their lives. They also might choose to cyberbully because they lack attention and supervision from parents. As a result, the Internet becomes their only source of entertainment and an outlet for getting attention.
Instead of finding a positive way to spend their time, cyberbullies entertain themselves by creating digital drama.
Cyberbullies Cave Under Peer Pressure
Sometimes kids will cyberbully to fit in with a group of friends or a clique. As a result, these kids succumb to peer pressure in order to be accepted at school, even if it means going against their better judgment.
These bullies are more concerned with fitting in than they are worried about the consequences of cyberbullying. Other times, groups of friends will cyberbully together because there is a false sense of security in numbers.
Cyberbullies Think Everyone Is Doing It
When teens believe lots of people are bullying online, they are more likely to engage in the behavior themselves. In their minds, it doesn’t seem like a significant problem because their peer group accepts the behavior. What’s more, kids will cyberbully others to fit in with a group that regularly harasses people online.
Cyberbullies Are Power-Hungry
Cyberbullying can be a manifestation of social status. Kids who are popular often make fun of kids who are less popular. Likewise, kids who are attractive might single out others they feel are unattractive. They use the Internet to perpetuate relational aggression and mean behavior.
They also will spread rumors and gossip and may even ostracize others through cyberbullying. Meanwhile, kids who are trying to climb the social ladder at school or gain some social power will resort to cyberbullying to get attention. They also might cyberbully to diminish the social status of another person.
Cyberbullies have a range of different motivations, but the general goal is to increase their own power by reducing the power of someone else.
Cyberbullies Believe They Won't Get Caught
The anonymity of the Internet gives kids a false sense of security.3 They believe if they post things anonymously that they won’t get caught. What’s more, kids who cyberbully do not necessarily see the reaction of the victim, which makes it extremely easy to say and do things they would not otherwise do. In fact, a significant number of kids who do not bully face-to-face will still engage in cyberbullying.
Cyberbullies Lack Empathy
Most kids who cyberbully believe it isn’t a big deal. Because they do not see the pain that they cause, they feel little or no remorse for their actions. In fact, several studies have found that a large number of students who engaged in online bullying reported not feeling anything for the victims after bullying online. Instead, many kids reported that online bullying made them feel funny, popular, and powerful.
Cyberbullying is hard to identify because the conversation usually doesn’t take place in a public space. So teachers or others can’t become aware and intervene, meaning it’s up to the individual to do something about it most of the time.
The issue is, there’s a big stigma around the problem of cyberbullying. Whenever someone tries to bring it up (especially adults) people tend to lash back. Things like “get off the internet then” or “just don’t read it” are common. However, that ignores the problem and won’t alleviate its symptoms.
So is there a solution?
Simply put, no – there isn’t one fix-all solution. It will take a conscientious effort from people to fight cyberbullying and shut offending behavior down.
According to CMO of NordVPN.solutions, Donnie A. Mitchell, for parents, it starts with educating their children on both the reasons why cyberbullying is bad as well as what to do if they’re targeted. This includes making sure they understand how cyberbullying affects others.
As a further precaution, parents can limit the number of websites or social media platforms their children have access to. There are various ways to do this, but the easiest way is to set up parental controls.
There are apps like Google Family Link or Qustodio. With these apps, parents can monitor their children’s mobile activity, limit usage, and block specific apps or websites.
Preventing cyberbullying as an adult is much harder, however. Because there’s really no controlling what other people do. But it’s still essential to address any bad behavior. It’s also important to have systems in place that keep the cyberbullies in check. However, these systems do need to actually work.
Sexual. Messages in this category contain explicit sexually offensive words that are intended to harass, intimidate, or make the recipient uncomfortable. There are both confessions, which convey the sender’s feeling towards the recipient and personal questions that are intended to make the recipient uncomfortable.
Hate. Messages in this category are intended to convey hatred and emotionally unsettle the recipient. Messages that convey hatred, death threats, and emotional/physical abuse belong in this bullying category.
Inappropriate flirting. The messages in this category are intended to convey a romantic interest toward the recipient. While this may not be considered bullying under normal circumstances, since the sender is anonymous, this can potentially cause significant distress to the recipient. We see messages that imply stalking, divulging/asking for personal secrets, and usage of words implying romantic interests, which especially under circumstances when the sender is anonymous can unsettle the recipient. This makes it an important bullying category to study.
Cyberbullying is an intentional action of harassment along the complex domain of social media utilizing information technology online. This research experimented unsupervised associative approach on text mining technique to automatically find cyberbullying words, patterns and extract association rules from a collection of tweets based on the domain / frequent words. Furthermore, this research identifies the relationship between cyberbullying keywords with other cyberbullying words, thus generating knowledge discovery of different cyberbullying word patterns from unstructured tweets. The study revealed that the type of dominant frequent cyberbullying words are intelligence, personality, and insulting words that describe the behavior, appearance of the female victims and sex related words that humiliate female victims. The results of the study suggest that we can utilize unsupervised associative approached in text mining to extract important information from unstructured text. Further, applying association rules can be helpful in recognizing the relationship and meaning between keywords with other words, therefore generating knowledge discovery of different datasets from unstructured text (Patacsil, 2019).