And difficult to detect and punish.
Cyberbullying can be completely out of the public view, making it that much more dangerous. Unless the bully or the person getting bullied shares the messages, no one would be privy to what’s happening behind the screen. When you text, it only goes to a select group of people, excluding all others. Phones, therefore, have begun making bullying and our lives more secretive, more subtle, and more insidious.
Because of the hidden nature of cyberbullying, adults also tend to be less aware of its existence, and can, therefore, not lend discipline to the bullies, letting the mind and words of a teenager run uninhibited and wild against another teen. So, the effects of bullying are bad, but the effects of cyberbullying and our phones might be worse.
Nowadays the schools have been preventing and stopping bullying a lot, so there is not much bullying that happens physically. There aren’t many people who just directly cause bullying because usually the school recognizes it and helps the victim easily. But unfortunately, as the protection from bullying developed, the way of bullying people has developed too, and is dense. The most used way of bullying nowadays is caused by social media, which is now the most common thing for people. The bullying is also not direct, which makes it harder to punish the bullies. These bullies make their victims think they are one of the group and are friends, but actually they are not.
Social media has created a new wave of bullying types. The unfortunate part is that schools do not have a handle on how to “regulate” or provide a clear direction on how to support those who get bullied outside of school. As a result, bullying will continue because many parents will claim “kids are being kids” and schools will claim “this is outside of our jurisdiction,” while most students will claim “oh, it was just a joke.” It’s a sad cycle of events.
It can be really confusing.
I agree that bullying today looks a lot different than bullying in the past. Though I have never “soft blocked” anyone, I have restricted them, or removed them as a friend (leaving them as a follower). Often this is for my own good. If that person has left me hurt, or they do not treat me correctly, I remove them. On the flip side, it is easier to get hurt when people hide behind screens. People tend to be more confident to say what is on their chest when eye contact does not have to be made. It does make living in today’s world a lot more confusing. As a teen, I am learning how to decode emojis and punctuation, as well as how long to wait to reply and what song will send the best message.
The Learning Network
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