Online bullying and cyberbullying are relatively the same things. What is cyberbullying? Cyberbullying can be defined as a form of bullying somebody virtually, that is, with the help of the internet. When somebody uses the help of technology or the internet to embarrass, threaten, harass, or cynically target another person is called cyberbullying. And the person who is bullying a person using the internet is termed a cyberbully.
Statistics show that most cyberbullies are teenagers, and the target can be of any age.
What Makes Online Bullying Different?
Bullying is not restricted to students, as we often determine. It has gone beyond the boundaries of college and university. This essay on cyberbullying will help you to understand how it is different than other forms of bullying. There is a link between harming intensity when it comes to face-to-face bullying and online bullying. It is shocking to see that 80% of online bully-victims were also bullied in real life.
Online bullying incidents mainly focus on defaming a person to a larger audience than traditional bullying. Also, in online bullying, if you are the victim, you can keep shreds of evidence such as screenshots to take further legal steps.
Hiding your identity or deactivating your accounts are possible to avoid further online bullying, which is unlikely in traditional bullying. The most harmful part of online bullying is that it is tough to express your impact to others as people can’t see you directly.
Prevalence Of Online Bullying
With people’s increasing dependency on the internet, new forms of cyberbullying are rising rapidly. According to recent research, almost 24% of young people and children face some form of online bullying. 17% of internet users, even children, tend to become cyberbullies.
As a conclusion to this section, we, unfortunately, guess that the prevalence of cyberbullying will rise to more harmful extents in the near future.
Forms Of Cyberbullying
In this essay, we are going to discuss the different forms of Cyberbullying. In broad categories, there are mainly ten types of cyberbullying. Here are the types:
Exclusion
Exclusion is when someone is left out or made to feel alone deliberately.
Harassment
Online harassment is someone sending derogatory, abusive, and threatening messages on the web.
Outing
The outing is deliberately hampering someone’s privacy by posting personal information and making them feel humiliated.
Cyberstalking
The strange stealing or monitoring of a person on the internet to make them feel uncomfortable is known as cyberstalking.
Trickery
Trickery is when someone from the internet gains somebody’s trust and then blackmail them with the target’s personal information.
Fraping
Fraping is a type of hacking. Fraping is when someone uses your social media accounts to post inappropriate things.
Dissing
Dissing is the act of posting cruel information about somebody on social media to defame them or wreck their stature.
Masquerading
Masquerading, as the word suggests, hiding behind a mask. This happens when a cyberbully makes fake accounts with fully wrong information solely to bully others on the web. They can be responsible for any type of cyberbullying you are reading on this list.
Flaming
Flaming is a type of cyberbullying where bullies directly send derogatory messages or post inappropriate things about somebody. The intensity of flaming is much more than trolling.
Trolling
Trolling is a form of upsetting others by passing belittling and cruel remarks on somebody, masking it as fun or a joke. Trolling can not be termed cyberbullying with full conviction, but it may produce ugly consequences.
Why Do People Cyberbully?
There can be a wide range of reasons for which someone would cyberbully others on the web.
Some reasons are:
- Cyberbullying can be a way to stay influential or popular on the internet
- Hurting somebody may give psychological pleasure to somebody
- Hurting others may be a path to cope with the bullies’ low self-esteem or confidence in life
- Greed for attacking wealth through unfair means such as threatening or blackmailing
How To Deal With A Cyberbully?
There are three steps in which you can deal with a cyberbully. These are some fruitful steps to follow to stop bullying on the web. Here are the steps:
Step 1
In the nominal stage, if you think someone is trying to bully you on the internet, you can simply report and block that person. It is the simplest step to end all connections with the bully.
Step 2
Expose the bully on the internet to make people aware of him. This step can be done only when you have gathered needful evidence against the person.
Step 3
If the situation is worse, you must go for legal actions against the bully. Take help of the law with all your evidence against the person.
Conclusion
With the world being more and more inclined towards the internet, either for work or for recreation, they are becoming more vulnerable to cyberbullying. Everybody using the internet must obtain fundamental education on cyberbullying and how to avoid it. Cyberbullying can possess huge consequences on the victim, but it is often neglected.
