Cyberbullying is at an all-time high and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

Bullies who used to be in the schoolyard threatening to beat up someone if they didn’t give them their lunch money, are now online posing as anyone they want to in order to avoid being caught. How can modern-day law enforcement keep up with the challenges of cyberbullying as it continues to increase? Learn why is Cyberbullying a problem

Why Is It Such a Problem?

Has the world gotten meaner? Sometimes it might seem so when you watch the news nowadays. Not only are there more incidents of cyberbullying but school shootings, fights, violence, terrorism threats, and many other violent crimes seem to be sprouting up too.

Are They Connected?

According to some sources, and due to the fact that the violent crime rate among youth has gone up at approximately the same time as incidents of cyberbullying, one can only conclude that they are somewhat related. We do know that kids who are ‘bullied’ often become some of those school shooters. We also know that the bullies are often habitual, repeat offenders in the criminal justice system after leaving school if they have been on record as bullies in the school system.

What Can Be Done?

Schools need tougher penalties for bullying offences and things should be dealt with according to the seriousness of the offence. Local, state, and federal laws should also be stricter so that people realize that there is a fine line between malicious bullying and criminal acts of violence. One thing you can do to take an active part in this is to write to your legislators and report any incidents of bullying on any level to your local authorities.

Cyberbullying’s Many Forms

One of the problems with cyberbullying and why it is so hard to control is the fact that it takes on so many different forms. It is not as simple as someone walking up to your child on the playground and taking away their sandwich or books. It is an ultimate control technique, designed to create terror in the minds of the victims and coerce them to do things they feel uncomfortable with or to feel intimidated. This is similar to traditional “real world” bullying. But the difference is the victims of cyberbullying feel hopeless due to the approach of cyberbullying (an unknown assailant) and often the level of damage that results from cyberbullying has much further reaching consequences than traditional bullying. Anonymous text messages, social media flaming, hate emails, smear campaigns, and other methods all start small but grow incrementally over time to uncontrollable levels. The psychological harm done by just a simple text message that carries negative insults and innuendos can do damage that can last for years.

Yik Yak Cyberbullying

If you have never heard of this, you need to know about it now. It was on the news a while back after a rash of bullying reports came out after the release of a new app called “Yik Yak.” Seemingly a harmless social media app for youngsters, the app was intended to be for college students, to allow them to connect with their local friends and students online. But younger kids in high school and middle school got a hold of the app and started using it to target specific kids and groups they didn’t like. Some kids have been getting on the app and creating false user names and fake identities and using the app to terrorize kids. The biggest problem with it is due to the fact that it involves people all within a central geographical location. This causes increased danger to local students and people in the online chat rooms due to the fact that many of them know where the person is in real life.

The Safety in Distance

In many incidents of cyberbullying, while alarming and bothersome, the victim does not often feel any real danger from the person as long as they can remain anonymous in chats and online conversations. They do not feel any physical threat from such individuals as long as they are located a long distance away. But there is an inherent sense of danger when the people they are chatting with who have bullied them are located in the same town, and rightfully so. This was the primary problem with the Yik Yak cyberbullying situation as to why it was considered so dangerous.

Cyberbullying in General

All cyberbullying is bad. It creates fear in the heart of those who are bullied and keeps them from being able to enjoy life. Some have even committed suicide due to the extreme humiliation such cyberbullying causes. When people ask “why is cyberbullying a problem?” it is often ignorant, because what they are saying is that too big a deal is made about it. What do you think?

It IS a Big Deal!

The reason that we should answer this question: “why is cyberbullying a problem?” is because it IS such a problem. If young kids, who had their whole futures ahead of them, will point a gun to their heads, jump off a bridge, kill themselves or others, or take a gun in their hands and head to some school yard, then it IS a problem! Sometimes we tend to try to play down something that is serious because we do not want to admit that it is serious. but cyberbullying is a big issue because it is terrorizing our children. So, as Harry Reasoner once put it, “If you’re not part of the solution, you are part of the problem!”

Why Is Cyberbullying a Problem? Five Steps to Take Action Today

If you want to know what to do about cyberbullying, here are five steps you can take to protect yourself and your family today to prevent such atrocities:

  1. Report EVERY incident of bullying, no matter how small. This does not mean that you have to go to federal court for a minor incident. But it DOES mean that you should take every incident seriously and take the appropriate actions to prevent it from happening to someone else.
  2. Consider the source and report to network administrators, as well as authorities. When an incident occurs online, you have the right to report this to the system or network administrators and let them know what happened, when, who is involved, and other information. Local police should be told too, especially if it involves a local juvenile or adult. But often the system administrator of the online site on which the bullying occurred will be best able to help. They will also be able to identify the culprits of the bullying so that you can report the names to the proper authorities.
  3. Install kid monitoring software on your computers. This is controversial in some parenting circles but it may be your best line of defence when it comes to protecting your child from such attacks. By monitoring the behaviour and sites visited by your child while online, you can get an idea of the patterns that preceded the incident and this can be valuable information to use to tell authorities should bullying reach higher levels.
  4. Have a “zero tolerance” policy against cyberbullying. Explain to your children that you will neither tolerate they’re being bullied NOR will you tolerate their bullying of other children online. Just like in the real world, they all need to understand that bullying is harassment when it occurs off campus and is punishable by civil courts and the law.
  5. Get involved. Perhaps the best thing parents can do in this day and age of cyberbullying and online social media, where access is so easy and quick is to get involved in what your child is doing. This is just good parenting and involves a lot more than asking what they did at school. Really probe and find out who their friends are, what is on their minds, and why their grades have fallen. Often falling grades result from something that is worrying a child and you may need to take up some things with the school counsellor to get to the bottom of it.

A Final Note

Why is cyberbullying a problem? When people ask that, what do you say? A good answer is: “Because of the damage it does and the lasting effect on young impressionable minds.” There are many bullying statistics we could go into here, but suffice it to say that criminal minds begin at school. Kids who bully become violent offenders many times. That’s the truth. Look it up for yourself and teach your kids to respect others at an early age. Teach your kids also to report every incident of bullying, whether it is real bullying in the real world or bullying online.

What’s In A Name?

One final point to make is that when these bullying behaviours occur at school, it is somewhat tolerated (too much) and kids are given a chance to improve and grow from the experience. But in the real world, it would be called by other names, like “harassment, terroristic threatening, stalking, defamation….” Remember the law takes over when the school campus ends. Teach kids that if it doesn’t occur at school, it falls into the hands of the law.

Help us spread the word on needing to understand Why is Cyberbullying a Problem and how we stop cyberbullying from existing in today’s world!