Cyberbullying: Solutions to a New Phenomenon

Cyberbullying: Solutions to a New Phenomenon

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. This popular saying is completely false. Names do hurt. Name-calling and other non-physical abuse have become increasingly popular especially with the development of technology. Sameer Hinduja and Justin W. Patchin, authors of Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard, define cyberbullying as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices” (5). Technology is continually progressing. For example, since the year 2000 Internet usage has increased by 249.6% (Hinduja and Patchin 7), creating more opportunities for children and adolescents to harass and bully one another.

Cyberbullying is different than traditional bullying because it is over some technological device. There is no physical contact; there is no instantaneous response (Urbanski and Permuth 67). This does not mean that cyberbullying does not hurt or affect its victims though. In fact, 72% of students consider cyberbullying to be just as harmful as just plain, old bullying (Urbanski and Permuth 67). Victims usually experience “low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, insecurity, oversensitivity, introversion, and withdrawal from social activities” (Gibbone and Manson). Cyberbullying is real. Even worse, there is no escape from it. The web, and technology in general, is always active, always happening and so is the bullying, whether or not the victim is online (Urbanski and Permuth 76). Society cannot and should not just let this problem worsen and continue on. A few possible solutions exist for solving this problem of cyberbullying. To truly combat cyberbullying in grades Kindergarten through twelve though, society should educate schools, parents, and students and increase awareness and discussion about this serious problem. Then, through these actions, society will discover appropriate preventative measures and responses to cyberbullying.

It appears as if there is no uniform procedure with dealing for cyberbullying. Sometimes it seems as if schools create their protocol for bullying on the spot as cases and issues arise. Other schools brush over the topic, not really delving into it, not truly making a genuine attempt to solve and stop the problem of cyberbullying. For example, my younger sister, Elizabeth, is eleven years old and is in sixth grade at a public middle school in Wilmette, Illinois. This year in health class, which is a unit of her physical education class, she shared that she spent two periods, a total of eighty minutes, partially dealing with cyberbullying. Her class was given a packet and completed a worksheet in class. Though the sixth graders did this for two days in health, there were only a couple of questions that applied to bullying. The students had to define cyberbullying and bullying and reason why bullies behave in the manner they do as well