Cyber
bullying evolves with social media
By Nia Kennedy and Alexandria Smith
Susie comes home from a long day of exams to an
email from someone she doesn’t know using profane and vulgar language. In this
email she can see that it was also sent to all the popular kids at school. She
panics because she knows that she is going to be the laughing stock of school
tomorrow. Does this sound familiar to you?
This is a perfect example of cyber bullying. According
to Bill Belsey, founder of cyberbullying.org, “Cyber bullying involves the use
of information and communication technologies such as email, cell phone, and
pager text messages, instant messages, defamatory personal Web sites and
defamatory online personal polling Web site to support deliberate, repeated and
hostile behavior by an individual or group that is intended to harm others.”
Everyday, technology is changing the world. Cyber
bullying is hard to control or delete. People can repost, retweet, and/or
screen shot on their smart phones and post it to any social networking site.
Rocky Hanna and Ricky Ardley, administrators at
Leon High School in Tallahassee, told multimedia workshop students that the
number one reason people get into altercations are posts on social networking
sites. Sometimes, it may not just be physical harm; it can also be emotional
and verbal.
Cyber bullying is not just a hot topic among
students. A 2011 Chronicle of Higher Education Forum asked “Is RateMyProfessors
Cyber-Bullying?” One post by pixelvainia on April 16, 2011 responded with “Sure
it’s bullying, but also free speech…”
One type of bullying
that is rapidly growing is twitter beef or “tweefing.” “Tweefing” is back and forth cyber bullying
online. It seems like nothing when you’re scrolling past it on your timeline, but
you also cannot see what this is doing to the victim. Anything can trigger
twitter beef, and the person’s followers tend to instigate by retweeting what
the person posted. It may have had nothing to do with the person, but it can
easily be taken out of context and start a feud. Threats can begin to get
exchanged and sometimes physical altercations will branch from those threats.
There have been
numerous cases in which cyber bullying cases have led to tragedies, including
the suicide deaths of Tyler Clementi and Megan Meier. Now, social networking
sites have created ways so that you can let them know if someone is bullying
you. For example, on Facebook and Twitter, there are “block” button that can
prevent you and the person bullying you from having interaction.
