The rise of cyber bullying

After reading this article, I found out many things about cyber bullying; many people have been seriously harmed or even killed by cyber bullying, cyber bullying may be even worse than physical bullying and many countries, organisations and people are doing a lot to prevent cyber bullying. Thirteen year old Ryan Halligan committed suicide after rumours were spread via instant messaging that he was gay and a girl pretended to like him and copied their chat exchanges to her friends. Fifteen year old Gail Jones committed suicide after receiving twenty silent calls on her mobile phone every thirty minutes. The first reason why cyber bullying may be even worse than physical bullying is the sheer number of people who can view anything posted online. It would be bad enough to be cyber bullied by one kid when nobody else knew about it, but a video seen by hundreds or thousands of your peers could be devastating. The second reason is its sheer relentlessness. Cyber bullying could go on 24/7, three hundred and sixty five days a year and there is no escape since today's teens depend on the internet to keep in touch with peers. The third reason is cyber bullies can stay anonymous when online and this means they can write things they would not dare to if their identity were known. Anonymity can also amplify bullying's negative effect on the victim. The psychological ramifications of not knowing who is attacking you can be maddening. The lack of face to face contact might tempt bullies to new levels of cruelty. In cyberspace, where there is no visual contact, you get more extreme behavior. So what can be done? A consortium of European researchers recently developed role playing software called Fearnot!, which gets children to empathise with a victim of bullying. The US Congress passed a law making it a federal crime to "annoy, abuse, threaten or harrass" another person over the internet. In South Korea, the "internet real name system" forces online portals and new websites to record the identities of people who post content and to disclose their contact details if someone wants to sue them for libel or infringement of privacy. However, it can be difficult to persuade people to take the laws seriously and in the US they apply only to adults. Many jurisdictions do not want to investigate or prosecute these cases as they are short staffed and busy pursuing what they call real crime. John Halligan, father of the boy who committed suicide after being harrassed online, continues to lobby for cyber bullying legislation that specifically targets children. He also talks to school groups and runs a website chronicling the events that lead to his son's death. Last but not least, I think that cyber bullying is a very horrible act that can happen to anyone since most of the people use the internet nowadays. I wish that more can be done to prevent cyber bullying, or else the future generation will suffer greatly and the world will be even worse than it already is right now.
Written by:
Zames Lee Wen Jie
3H (38)