Cyberbullying: A Definition Of Bullying

1556 Words7 Pages

A definition of bullying
Bullying refers to consistent verbal, physical, social or psychological behaviour that is hurtful and involves the ill use of power by an individual or group towards one or more persons. Cyberbullying refers to bullying through information and communication technologies. Bullying can involve degradation, power, intimidation, ill treatment and several other forms of harassment including that based on gender, ethnicity, if they have a disability and their sexual orientation. To bully in any form or for what reasons can have long standing effects on the persons including bystanders involved. (New South Wales government education, 2015)
In the context of bullying bystanders are also affected. Many who observe the bullying …show more content…

By definition, it occurs among young people. When an adult is involved, it may meet the definition of cyber-harassment or cyberstalking, a crime that can have legal consequences and involve jail time. (Foundation, 2015).Bullying through social media is continuing to grown and it is a problem that is affecting thousands of adolescents on a day to day basis. Cyber bullying can be more severe than tradition bullying because most of online bullying is anonymous, therefore it allows the attacker to be as cruel as they want without anyone knowing who they are. Any person can set up a fake account on a number of social media sites if they have a valid email address, unfortunately this makes it very difficult to trace the person behind the …show more content…

Roughly eighty seven percent of teenagers on the site have been targeted by bullies, some being friends on Facebook and others being complete strangers. Millions of people ranging from the ages of nine to one hundred use the social media site. Although there has been a recent decline in the amount of teenagers using Facebook, it’s one of the most common places for a teenager to be cyberbullied still. Private messaging, harsh commenting on a users’ profile picture, also known as a selfie, posting photographs without someone’s permission and commenting publicly about a particular person on a ‘status’ are all ways people are exposed to cyberbullying. (Patchin, Justin; & Hinduja, Sameer,