Headlining Story
CYBERBULLYING
In a world that is completely and utterly engrossed in the world of technology and social media, how do we control it? Can we? Does it matter? With all of this ever-changing new-age technology comes more and more people becoming involved in social media. The biggest issue that coincides with social media is bullying. To be more specific, cyber bullying. It is a topic that has been in the spotlight for numerous years and has been a serious problem with pre-teens, teens and young adults. Cyberbullying can affect anyone at any time. It’s something that is difficult to put a hault to and disappointing to say the least. Cyberbullying comes in the forms of any and all social media. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, Youtube and quite frankly any form of social media you can think of. In today’s story, I’m going to bring to you real life people who have been affected by bullying and how they’ve combated the issue.
Cyberbullying doesn’t have to be a consistent thing. Even just one hate comment is a form of cyberbullying, whether you think so or not.
Cyberbullying Research Center conducted a survey for nearly 15,000 middle school and high school students in about 97 different schools throughout the United States. The CBRC found that, “about 25% of the students we have surveyed over the last eight studies have told us that they have been cyberbullied at some point in their lifetimes. About 9% said they were cyberbullied in the 30 days preceding the survey. Similarly, about 16% of those who we surveyed admitted that they had cyberbullied others at some point in their lifetimes (about 6% in the most recent 30 days).”
According to bullyingstatistics.org, “Over 80 percent of teens use cell phones regularly, making it the most popular form of technology and a common medium for cyberbullying.” Also, “over 25 percent of adolescents and teens have been bullied repeatedly through their cell phones or the Internet.”
Arianna, style blogger and avid social media user, has certainly had her fair share of bullying. “I started my blog through Tumblr, and initially I was given a warm welcome by some awesome people on the site. BUT I certainly had my fair share of haters.” She continued, “People don’t like to see you happy. They want to see you break down and lose. So, I ‘d get these awful messages by anonymous people that I would rather not share. It hurt me at first, but I realized they simply just had nothing better to do than to send me anonymous hate comments.” Here’s more from Ari…
Cyberbullying can affect a person so much, it could drive them to hurt themselves or worse, suicide. As a nation, a lot has been done to raise awareness and help fight the cause. Celebrities, companies and more have been teaming up for years to help rise against cyberbulling and help fight it. Of course, there’s only so much you can do to try to completely put a hault to cyberbullying because there will always be technology and with technology comes social media. If we can all come together and raise awareness against cyberbullying anything can happen and we can really create a change in the world.
Click the links below to learn more about fighting bullying:
www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org – Hotline: 1 (800) 273-8255