Our world, as well as the way we communicate, has changed significantly throughout the years. One of the ways it has become significantly easier and much more connected is through the internet, but more specifically, through social media. Though social media has brought us closer in terms of being able to connect with anyone across the world in an instant, it has also brought a lot of negatives aspects as well. In fact, in this essay, we will be talking about the ways it has done so by speaking of bullying, but more specifically, cyberbullying. Below, we will note the causes, effects on victims, as well as analyze this subject using a symbolic interactionalist perspective.
Social media is grounded in our day to day lives and has
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It may depend on the severity of cases, as well as how long the person may have been exposed to such threats, and certain things like their past experiences and their different upbringings. For example, someone who has had a supportive family and strong inner circle in their corner may be able to shrug off instances of cyberbullying compared to someone who’s been constantly put down by the people close to them and is relentlessly bullied — both on and outside of the internet. While bullying can be as devastating outside of social media, there may be more concrete ways to approach it. For example, given that we’re a generation that’s so plugged in, it’s a lot more difficult to escape, rather than avoiding a specific corner in school where you know a group of people hang out. There’s also the way internet can help those who bully hide their tracks to unsuspecting eyes, such as deleting profiles or by creating fake ones. In fact, it is also seen that many of the people who cyberbully often tilts towards one gender more than the other. “A key concern of the present study is the claim that girls engage more than boys in indirect aggression” (Ging and Norman, 2015, 808). Meaning that girls prefer to bully on social media than they do at work places, or school. “This “mean girl” discourse has re-emerged in some of the scholarship on cyberbullying, where it is argued that girls, because of their “natural” proclivity for indirect aggression are more attracted to the “indirect” nature of cyber conflict” (Ging and Norman, 2015, 808). Therefore, while social media has brought us various good, it has also exposed us to many negatives such as leaving people a little more open to being bullied and beaten down. As previously mentioned, we will begin with the effects that such actions can implement, both on the victim. To begin, those who