Notes

2) What is cyberbullying?
Cyberbullying is bullying that takes place using electronic technology. Electronic technology includes devices and equipment such as cell phones, computers, and tablets as well as communication tools including social media sites, text messages, chat, and websites.
Examples of cyberbullying include mean text messages or emails, rumors sent by email or posted on social networking sites, and embarrassing pictures, videos, websites, or fake profiles.
3) What makes cyberbullying different?
Kids who are being cyberbullied are often bullied in person as well. Additionally, kids who are cyberbullied have a harder time getting away from the behavior.
Cyberbullying can happen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and reach a kid even when he or she is alone. It can happen any time of the day or night. Cyberbullying messages and images can be posted anonymously and distributed quickly to a very wide audience. It can be difficult and sometimes impossible to trace the source. Deleting inappropriate or harassing messages, texts, and pictures is extremely difficult after they have been posted or sent.
4) Effects of cyberbullying
Kids who are cyberbullied are more likely to:
- Use alcohol and drugs
- Have lower self-esteem
- Have more health problems such as anxiety, depression, lack of sleep, and unhappieness
- Skip school or be unwilling to attend school
- Experience in-person bullying
- Receive poor grades
5) The Numbers
- Nearly 43% of kids have been bullied online. 1 in 4 has had it happen more than once.
- 70% of students report seeing frequent bullying online.
- Over 80% of teens use a cell phone regularly, making it the most common medium for cyber bullying.
- 68% of teens agree that cyber bullying is a serious problem.
- 81% of young people think bullying online is easier to get away with than bullying in person.
- 90% of teens who have seen social-media bullying say they have ignored it. -84% have seen others tell cyber bullies to stop.
- Only 1 in 10 victims will inform a parent or trusted adult of their abuse.
- Girls are about twice as likely as boys to be victims and perpetrators of cyber bullying.
- About 58% of kids admit someone has said mean or hurtful things to them online. More than 4 out 10 say it has happened more than once.
- Bullying victims are 2 to 9 times more likely to consider committing suicide.
- About 75% of students admit they have visited a website bashing another student.
6) Alex
In sixth grade these kids that I went to school with commented on Facebook saying that my parents separated because my dad didn’t love me anymore and that he moved across the country because he didn’t want to have to deal with me anymore. These posts about my family continued until one day, I confronted these kids about the issue telling them that that wasn’t the case and that what goes on with my family has absolutely nothing to do with them. In 8th grade, this one girl I was best friends with began hating me towards the end of the school year. My mom told me to unfollow her on social media to keep away from the drama. She then would post things on Facebook that were indirected towards me, saying that I was ugly and a joke and that I looked like a clown. When taken to the school, she convinced the principal that the posts were “about a basketball game.” After that incident, the cyber bullying with her stopped but the bullying continued in school. After the year ended, I unfollowed, blocked, and reported everyone that had bullied me in school, while they all did the same. In the summer going into high school, I decided to make an ask.fm account, blocking people that did not like me that had an account so I would not receive messages from them. Good or bad. I had anonymous messages turned on and received my first hate message from someone I would never even see again from my old school. It said some things that I cannot say in school but I simply responded with “yup.” The same person messaged me again saying, “you’re so annoying! EVERYONE HATES YOU!” During school last year, I knew people didn’t like me so I answered with “don’t you think I already know that?” Once again, I received another message. It said, “ha true! You’re sad and pathetic.” My mom then found out about the messages I was receiving and told me to delete my account, so I did. I knew who sent me the messages and I went on her ask.fm account one day to see what she was posting. People would ask her what her honest opinion of me was. Once again, she said some things that I am not allowed to say in school. Questions about me continued on her ask.fm. She would call me ugly and her and a few other girls that used to be my best friends came up with a nickname so they could talk about me and I supposedly wouldn’t know. Alligator. I would go onto the other girl’s accounts and read what they were saying. When asked whom they hated, they would respond with Alligator. When asked what 3 people they wanted to kick out of the school and kill, I was always one of those answers. At one point during the summer everyone from my 8th grade class was invited to Busch Gardens except for me and a couple other people. Two people made a snapchat video filming everyone around saying, “everyone here hates you!” Those few years were the lowest I’ve been. I had become anxious, had low self-esteem, missed a ton of school, and became depressed. For a while I believed what these people were saying about me and believed that everything they had said about me was true. Eventually, the cyber bullying died down as the summer went on. I unfollowed, blocked, reported, went to the school, screenshotted posts and messages, everything I thought possible to stop the bullying. With me, reporting the behavior didn’t help. It just made them hate me even more and it may have fueled the fire to the max by taking the incidents to law enforcement. It wasn’t really dealt with. The cyber bullying itself eventually died down as people realized that I wasn’t going to see them again.
7) Lisa
I never had been bullied face to face at school but I have been a victim of cyber bullying, creating a huge impact on my life. It happened at the end of school in 8th grade through the beginning of my freshman year of high school. Someone had made a fake account of me on Facebook and I didn’t know until one of my friends had told me. I asked my friend to use her account so I could see what was going on and my fake account had thousands of “friends” that kept posting things harassing me, sharing personal information, and pictures and people had messaged me a lot of things to the point where some of them thought they were dating me or wanted me to die. Many people had joined in and just about every post on the news feed was about me. Such as “like this post if you hate Lisa Mullins” and each of these posts would get over 300 likes and 1,000 comments of people just tearing me down and some telling me to kill myself. I tried to tell people that it wasn’t me but the people who had owned the fake account kept denying it and deleting the comments and blocking my friends account so people would continue to think it was all real. I became very depressed and I didn’t want to go to school because I was afraid that something bad was going to happen. The harassing posts didn’t stop and people still believed that the fake account really was me, even when I tried explaining that it wasn’t. However, I did get some support from close friends and classmates. At first I thought it was this one girl who was my best friends’ friend at the time. I felt alone and depressed and I didn’t know who to trust or what to do. I didn’t tell my parents; only close friends and my best friend. In the beginning of freshman year the girl that I had originally thought created the account confessed that she was part of it, but she did not start or mainly run the account, but it was my best friend. At first, I didn’t believe her because we had been best friends for years. When I told her I didn’t believe her, she sent me screen shots of the conversation between her and my best friend saying, “lets make an account of her to ruin her life!” along with many other messages of her sharing personal information and what to do were said as well. I was so depressed and mad when I realized that my best friend didn’t help me out when the cyber bullying was occurring. I asked her why she did it and she kept denying it but then the girl who I originally thought owned the account gave me the username and password to the account. I found out that it really was my best friend when I read the messages between her account and the fake account. I confronted her again and she just kept apologizing and said she did it because she thought it was funny and that no one would take it seriously. I just couldn’t trust her anymore and didn’t understand as to how she could’ve done something like this. It had been going on for over 5 months and she knew how depressed I was when it was happening yet she still continued with the posts. I didn’t tell any adult and just took down the account, telling as many people as possible that it was a fake account.
9) The Solution
As Maya said, we need to speak out. Cyberbullying can be stopped if we create more awareness and speak out, If we advocate for it, if we just realize that we should not be ashamed of being a victim of cyber bullying, maybe people will realize just how big of a problem this is. People kill themselves because of this because it is always there, tormenting the victim. The thing about regular bullying is that its usually only at school. The thing about cyber bullying is that it can follow you anywhere. These bullies can post absolutely horrible things wherever you are in the world. We need to tell people our stories and hopefully people will realize just how big of an issue this is. We need to keep this in the news. There was a period of time where putting a stop to cyberbullying was all the rage, now it’s starting to die down but it can’t. Cyberbullying is still such an important topic and we cannot stop with awareness now.