How do you feel when these words are directed at you?. Do you feel angry? sad? or humiliated?.
These are just some of the words seen by a victim of cyber bullying. In fact, it can be considered as ‘soft’ as there are harsher methods of bullying on the internet. These methods include receiving threatening messages, having private emails or text messages forwarded to other people without consent, posting embarrassing pictures or photographs of themselves without permission, spreading rumors that are humiliating online and even stalking.
CYBER BULLYING
“Why do people bully others online?”. The main reason for that is the internet allows bullies to remain anonymous and it is harder to trace the bully online. Not only that, bullies will find it easier to be more vicious online as there is no physical contact. Photographs or rumors are also much easier to be forwarded or spread to a greater audience with the presence of emails, blogs and social websites. The victims of cyber-bullying are mainly teenagers.
WHY ARE TEENAGERS THE TARGET OF CYBER-BULLYING ?
I will be focusing on teenagers and cyber-bullying on this blog as teenagers are the main victims of cyber-bullying. According to a study done by “Opinion Research Corporation for Fight Crime: Invest in Kids”, 1 in 3 teenagers in the U.S have been a victim of cyber bullying. A reason why teenagers are frequently targeted by cyber bullies is due to their immaturity and self-conscious.
Teenagers often fall prey to scams as they are unsure of the rights and wrongs on the net. They also take a lot of notice on their image. This is the main reason why we see many deaths from teenagers committing suicide due to cyber-bullying. Unlike adults, a teenager would feel very depressed and emotional whenever they are thrown with the words such as ugly or fat. They also lack the ability to express their problems with others, making the situation much dire.
HOW ARE TEENAGERS BULLIED AND HOW DO THEY REACT?
Teenagers are often bullied through some of these methods.
Cyber-bullies:
• Pretend to be a victim’s friend and later trick the victim
• Trick the victim into revealing personal information
• Spread lies and rumors about a victim
• Post pictures that are personal or humiliating without the consent of the victim
• Spread and forward email or text messages that are personal to the public
HOW DO TEENAGERS REACT AFTER BECOMING A VICTIM OF CYBER-BULLYING?
There are many ways in which teenagers react after being a victim. Most would approach it in a positive way. This includes:
• Blocking all connection with the cyber-bully
• Deleting all messages that are connected with the cyber-bully without reading them
• Reporting the problem to website moderator or admin
• Sharing and talking to another person about the bully
A victim of cyber-bully experiences different types of emotions. Especially for teenagers, victims will usually feel angry, scared, depressed or humiliated. These emotions can sometimes drive them into doing things such as cyber-bullying others, seeking revenge on the bully as well as avoiding contacts with friends and daily activities. The most severe of these reactions is suicide. A recent case of suicide due to cyber-bullying involves a girl, Megan Meier, aged 13. She committed suicide after being dumped by her online boyfriend, who apparently is a mother of her friend who is seeking revenge. The news can be found HERE
CYBER-BULLYING IN SINGAPORE.
Even though cases of cyber-bullying in Singapore are rare, it is undeniable that there are teen bullies and victims of cyber-bullies among us. In fact, just last month (December 08), a 16 year old girl was caught after she purposely created fake profile on popular social networking sites such as MySpace and Friendster to throw insults at people whom she dislike in school. It is almost a similar case to the one of Megan Meier’s. The 16 year old girl created fake profile and started befriending the victims before hurling insults to them. Luckily, she was caught by the school’s authorities before the victims incur any deep emotional scars. More of the news can be found HERE.
A survey done in 2006 shows that a quarter of the 3,488 Singaporean surveyed have been victims of cyber-bullying. In fact, in a survey that I did not long ago that involved 56 students , 24 students said that they have been victims of cyber-bullying before. The most popular form of cyber-bullying is receiving threatening or insulting emails from strangers. However, all of them claimed to not have been affected by it.
Recently, I went to a nearby secondary to interview some of the students for their thoughts. I did a video interview to find out what teenagers think about cyber-bullying and whether they will be affected by it.
HOW CAN WE PREVENT CYBER BULLYING?
There are many methods in which we can help in preventing cyber-bullying. This includes:
• Tell our friends whom we know cyber-bully others, to stop
• Report cyber-bullying to adults or teachers. If it is on internet sites, to the admin or moderator.
• Block all communications with the cyber-bully
We can also educate our younger siblings or relatives about the proper internet etiquette. In this way, not only are we preventing them form being a victim of cyber-bullying, we are also preventing them from becoming a cyber-bully.
Why did you say that 'Teenagers often fall prey to scams as they are unsure of the rights and wrongs on the net. They also take a lot of notice on their image. This is the main reason why we see many deaths from teenagers committing suicide due to cyber-bullying'? What do you mean by saying that teens are inmage-conscious and thta's why they are often victims?
ReplyDeleteDo provide more info on the questions and responses from your own survey. Also, what was the survey that was carried out in 2006?
ReplyDeleteGood idea to have the interviews. Hope you asked for permission to use their video footage.
ReplyDeleteOne of the girls mentioned that 'everyone is a victim and a cyber bully'. Do you agree?
Nice marquee(You are Ugly)! That word could bring a person moral down if he or she wasn't strong and confident.
ReplyDeleteFrom my point of view, if you are mature and rational, you wouldn't be affected by those words as life still continues. So life your own life and don't be bother by it.
Cheers
Work out a life of yours!
Teenagers are often unsure of the right and wrongs. For example, teenagers like to visit websites that contains entertainment. These sites include games and song downloading websites that are illegal. Sometimes, these sites require personal information such as name, phone number and email address. A teenager would usually just sign up without thinking twice about the action that they are taking. This is when cyber-bully uses these personal information to trick, stalk and scam their victims.
ReplyDeleteTeenagers are image-conscious. If a stranger walks up to 2 person, a 30 year old woman and a 16 year old girl, and says to both of them “You are fat and ugly", the one that would be most affected by it would be the girl. Even though both would feel insulted at first, over time, the woman would treat it as a joke and carry on life but the girl would find it hard to accept and would keep asking herself " am I really that fat?" or " do I really look ugly?". In a survey result taken from 29,000 teenagers done by Mission Australia, most teenagers state that their biggest concern is body image. The video of the interview can be found at this link.
http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-au&brand=ninemsn&tab=m2397&from=39&vid=24496E3B-7D98-4439-87E1-ECF6CB8440A0&playlist=videoByTag:mk:en-AU:vs:0:tag:AUnews_AUtoday:ns:MSNVideo_Top_Cat:ps:10:sd:-1:ind:1:ff:8A
This shows that a teenager's biggest fear is receiving insults on their image. If a teenager is constantly bombarded with these insults over a period of time, this will definitely humiliate and demoralize a teenager's self-esteem on top of the stress of finding a way to make him or her look better. This could easily drive a teenager that is lacking in strength or confidence to suicide.
In my survey that I did involving 56 teenagers, the main question that I asked was "Have you been a victim of cyber-bullying?. If the answer is yes, the second question was "How did you become a victim of cyber-bullying?". However if the answer is no, they would have to answer "Do you think you will be affected by if you were to be a victim of cyber-bullying?". As you know,24 of the teenagers that I interviewed said that they have been a victim before. The main reason as to why they become victim is because they had accidentally exposed their personal information to the web by signing up for memberships at different websites. They state that these were mostly sites such as "hacks for games" or "illegal downloading of songs" where users had to provide their email to the website before the websites can return a link to the file that they wanted to download. That is when they started to receive emails that contain threatening or humiliating messages. Among the 32 teenagers that say that they have never been victims before, only 1 state that she would be affected by cyber-bullying. The reason was that if she was cyber-bullied by a stranger or even a friend with messages that are insulting and humiliating, it would leave a deep emotional scar on her and would definitely affect her self-confidence. The others state that they think they would not be affected by cyber-bullying as they feel they have the strength and confidence to cope with the issue if they were to fall a victim.
The survey that was done in 2006 involving 3,488 Singaporean students was done by Coalition against Bullying for Children & Youth, an agency that provides resources for people to seek help on bullying issues. The survey was to find out how many or the percentage of students that have fallen victims to cyber-bullying.
Regarding to the statement "everyone is a victim and a cyber bully", I feel that it is not true. However it would be true if it was "anyone can be victim and can be a cyber-bully". Like she said, if we play games such as Audition, Maplestory, Grandchase etc, we will surely be prone to receiving insults if we are not good in the game and we could even be a bully if we insult our team or group mates in the game for their lack of skills. However, I feel that for it to be called cyber-bulling, it has to take place over a period of time, not just 1 day, and that the bully only has one thing on mind, to make the life of the victim miserable. Furthermore, in a game, we could be saying insults to team members as a motivation or a way to help them to improve, not with the intention of humiliation.
Yes i agree with Syahir that cyber bullying occurs across a certain "minimum amount of time". However, since it isn't explicitly stipulated, it is now down to us to determine based on each individual's tolerance level as well as level of sensitivity. Some people are more resistant to insults or criticisms, while some people take the criticisms more seriously.
ReplyDeleteWhile it is true that such tolerance levels vary based on the victims, however, with reference to my statement in Shao Ching's blog's comments, I strongly agree that laws should be passed with distinctive guidelines on what would be deemed as cyber bullying. This would be a temporary measure to relief the suffering of cyber bully victims.
With regards to the statement that 'everyone is a victim and a cyber bully', I agree with Syahir's version that "anyone can be victim and can be a cyber-bully". At the moment, there is very little we can do to prevent ourselves from becoming targets of cyber bullying. However, once we realize we are the targets, we can then take precautionary measures to prevent ourselves from falling victim to the bully. Yet, we can be play an active part in keeping ourselves from becoming THE bully. In this case, magnanimity and forgiveness becomes a cruicial element that can aid in resolving such matters.
Providing your personal email address to websites before you can receive the link to download the desired file? That's a pretty common practice.
ReplyDeleteAs for image-conscious teens, you are right. I do have a friend who is concerned about his image. To be precise, he is concerned about his hair.
Criticising his hair is taboo.
Yes, nowadays many people are becoming more "exterior" than they are "interior". In a world where character comes after appearance, the quality of a person has been undermined. Ze Chuan, perhaps you could share with us what happened if someone were to criticize your friend's hair?
ReplyDeleteWell I do believe that the character and the attitude towards life is more important. If everyone puts appearance right on top, then it would become easy for cyber bullies/real bullies to strike. It is harder to criticize the victim's character than the appearance. As i've noticed, the victims that the cyber bullies targetted often had "not-so-appealing-looks".
Ya, I agree with Jensen. We should not be focusing too much on our appearance. It would only make us vulnerable to insults on our appearance and a prime target for cyber bully.
ReplyDeleteHowever, since you said that victims of cyber-bullying often had "not-so-appealing" looks, does it mean we should look appealing so we do not get bullied by cyber-bullies?
In reply to Syahir, I apologize for not making my point clear.
ReplyDeleteWhat i mean is that, many people aren't born with natural good looks, and it is simply from my observation that bullies often targeted the "not-so-appealing" looking ones. Therefore it is of paramount importance that the focus be placed on character rather than appearance. The integrity of a person's character can withstand additional damage as compared to appearances, which are more volatile and subjected to changes.
Thus when criticized on their appearances, despite the fact that it is natural to feel lousy, the victims must not let it affect their general well being. This way, the bullies will not be able to succeed in terrorizing the victims.
Afterall, the victims will know that as long as they carry themselves proudly and righteously, no amount of criticisms on their appearances would hurt them.
Chen Wei Xi
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on your point on why teenagers are the target of cyber-bullies. However, like Jensen said, we should be not be focusing much on exterior but more on interior.
I feel that teenagers should be more educated on the rights and wrongs on the internet. For example, a teenager should know when they are most vulnerable to being a victim. In this case, like you have mentioned, teenagers fall victim when they sign up for websites to download stuffs. Do you think there is a way to help teenagers to prevent themseleves from being bullied?.
Hmm, after reading through your blog, I understand on how to handle cyber bullying more effectively.
ReplyDeleteNow I have to wait for someone to bully me online to put this in practice..
-James
another case of cyber bullying and how it may be prevented. another fruitful knowledge of cyber bullying, thanks. and to unwilling person : great mind thinks alike, i am waiting for people to bully me online too.
ReplyDeleteI have myself seen cases where bullies create fake profiles on social networking sites like Friendster to discriminate, spread rumours and say hurtful things about others, particularly someone they dislike.
ReplyDeleteIt happened to one of my acquaintances some time ago on Friendster. Friendster provides users to report any abuse and I personally did so, but unfortunately after some time when I checked back on the profile, it is still there. Nothing has been done to delete the fake profile or protect other users. I'm not sure if it is because there are too many abuse reports for the admistration to sort out or they simply don't care.
Either way, I think it trumps the purpose of having the report abuse link. Why provide such a link, when no action is taken when abuses are reported?
I would like to add that teenagers are more prone to cyber-bullying because they are a larger group of users compared to other age groups. I think the number of cyber-bullying cases are alot higher than what the statistics show because there are many other cases that go unreported, maybe because the victim doesn't want to bother the hassle of reporting it or it was a minor case.
You mentioned ways to prevent cyber-bullying, but what can be done to protect the rights of victims?
Last note to Unwilling person and Joey, if you do get cyber-bullied, report and share your findings with us :D
I was wondering is that so fun cyber bully other? Anyone here had try it before? To me, it is like a so boring. I would rather play game.
ReplyDeleteAre those methods legal (example threatening)? If it is not, why people still willing to do it? This might lead to prison.
Although we might think that being anonymous is very hard to track. In fact, most of the cyber cafe now will register the customer before they can use the computer. It is a easy task to track back.
From your blog, i can see that cyber bullying can hurt others so much. It's amazing. I did not realize that cyber bullying is so difficult to handle. I think cyber bullying is at "grey" area in laws. Someday, government will set some laws according cyber bullying so that i will no longer be a problem.
ReplyDelete[~~LOL(Laugh out loud)+ head-nod~~] to Weiliang's "it is like so boring(refering to the action of cyber bullying others)". Yes I agree with you! There are much better things to do than to actually spend time bullying others. Afterall, the victim at the receiving end might be just playing along with the bullies' antics.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think that threatening, be it over the internet or in real world, are deemed to be illegal so Weiliang is right to say that it could land the bully in prison. Especially nowadays the identity tracing technology is improving, it is becoming increasingly easier to track a culprit down.
To weiliang, jensen
ReplyDeleteMaybe one feels a sense of achievement to make fun or want to teach others a lesson so one uses cyberbullying. Or maybe to let others know one exists and one has no fear in you.
As one can be stay anonymous.
In response to Wei Xi's question "Do you think there is a way to help teenagers to prevent themseleves from being bullied?.", i think that definitely there are ways to help teenagers. I think we can address this problem by raising awareness among teenagers on how cyber-bullies strike and how they choose their victims. A reason why teenagers become victims is because they lack the knowledge about-cyber-bullying. Some of the ways in which we can raise awareness is by conducting talks in school or advertisement in television. However, I feel that the best way in which we can spread this message is by posting advertisements on popular internet sites that are visited by teenagers. There are already sites in the web that educate readers on how to not be a victim of cyber-bullying. But which teenager in the right mind would visit these sites when there are other entertaining games sites around.
ReplyDeleteTo weiliang, if you want to know, cyber-bullying is FUN. But I am not encouraging anyone to do that. I was a cyber-bully before. Now I am a good boy :P. Anyways, it happened a couple of years back. I met a guy on Friendster and he was a student in my school. I did not know him well and I started making fun of him. Soon others joined in and became more fun. Obviously he is not happy about it. I was never caught as I managed to remain anonymous throughout the time. Yes, I do admit it is fun and funny but just imagine what if you were the poor soul getting mocked at. I admit I was wrong but it was so fun at that time I just could not stop it.
So, even if cyber bullying can be fun, just think about those who would be hurt by actions.
I agree with wei liang and syahir that cyber bully can both be boring and fun.
ReplyDeleteBut as a cyber bully, if you are doing this for entertainment, you should also be cautious as who your victim is. Some of the victim can take this stuff as a joke but some will take it seriously which can lead to suicide and etc..
I agree with what Jenson on the fact that as long as we carry themselves proudly and righteously, no amount of criticisms on our appearances would hurt us. But you cant blame victims on having negative thoughts since we have been brought up in a society that mostly judges us based on our looks. Some teenagers may not have the high self-esteem level others have. Its better to educate and expose teenagers more about cyber-bullying in a safer environment like through the school. This way, they will understand that what goes on the email/sms threat does not really matter.
ReplyDeleteWow, you really put in a lot of effort in this. Nice.
ReplyDeletePersonally, although I know ignoring the bully is best, it would be quite hard for me to take it lying down. I would probably feel very angry and insulted. But I would not feel sad or commit suicide as I believe most cases of cyber bullying are committed rashly. they probably never think before they act.
yep, i'm doing the same topic as you, so i know rather well how to avoid it, just simply ignore it. or treat it as an unlucky day to meet into such person when they insult you.
ReplyDeleteRidhuan
ReplyDeleteGood information on topic. Kudos for that interview segment with secondary school students. Seems that those teenagers are aware of this and yet it can be more effective through more awareness campaigns and talks. Schools should do more of "Cyber-Bullying Education" talks apart from those common "Sex Education" talks. Teenagers are keen to learn. Nannypatrol.
It was good to have the survey done - it would have helped if you showed us the figures (pie chart, etc?) with the questions so that there would be greater awareness as well as credibility.
ReplyDeleteSome of you have admitted to have been cyber bullies or cyber bullied. Some want to be cyber bullied - what's wrong with you?!
You should have realised by now that there are serious consequences and being a cyber bully or being cyber bullied is not fun or something to be trifled with.
Anyway, the local govt does not intend to have strict regulations on this, so it's important for people to manage and regulate themselves and to be educated on this.