Bullying is someone using their power to hurt someone physically, mentally or socially, it is much more worse than being mean. But with technologies in hand you don’t need to be powerful to harass anyone — And I present to you Cyberbullying.
Subsequently, there are various ways of cyberbullying, sending, posting or sharing negative, wrong information about anyone. These depraved activities to harass or defame someone makes the victim angry, sad, anxious, depressed and oftentimes suicidal which takes toll upon their mental health over years. Mostly, teenagers are either victims or perpetrators of cyberbullying. Their developing prefrontal cortex — a part of the brain which helps in making decisions and controlling impulses — often provokes them to take stupid decisions when poked even slightly. Ever Since we are in the middle of the pandemic, Gen Z’s are spending more time scrolling Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat for personal or educational purposes, internet hate has increased and so has cyberbullying.
It could happen anytime, anywhere leaving the victim with no place to feel safe. Victims are tormented by the hate they get through messages or through the hate page solely dedicated to trashing a person. Yes, you read it correct, purposely built HATE PAGES. With the anonymity features of social media platforms the picture has become scarier, the sufferers do not know who is organizing the attacks. Presence of these toxicities makes me feel queasy.
Cyberbullying is more pernicious when it comes to children who do not have the resilience to deal hatred like an adult. Just because it takes place over the internet and does not have physical threat parents generally ignore it. This leaves the victim in a timid spot. This is why 9 out of 10 of the cyberbullied do not tell their guardians about it.
Social media platforms are trying to curb floods of toxic, extreme content and misinformation. Instagram, which has the most number of young audiences, is using machine learning algorithms to detect cyberbullying in photos and captions. Parents should start to talk to their kids about cyberbullying. Products like “ReThink” are developing solutions to stop cyberbullying before the damage is done.
Research shows that when adolescents are alerted to rethink their decision, they change their minds 93% of the time. Using ReThink™, the overall willingness of an adolescent to post an offensive message reduced from 71% to 4%.
— Trisha Prabhu, Inventer ReThink
Cyberbullying is as heinous a crime. Awareness is the key to prevent from getting harassed online. Children should be made aware about the consequences of sharing personal information on the internet. It cannot be stopped until everyone takes responsibility to report any of such behaviour.