Severity of Cyberbulling

It is hard to say whether cyberbullying is more severe than regular bullying. However, one aspect of cyberbullying that can make it more intense is that words and images can be published and passed around between peers. A teenager may have control to take down comments on their sites which they don’t like and furthermore they can report the harassment to the site provider. Removing these comments and reporting users does not prevent the harassment from continuing. I’ve stated before in a previous blog entry, teenagers admit to saying things online they would not usually say when an adult is around so it is possible that cyberbullying is more severe because of the things teens are saying to each other.

Many kids can’t deal with cyberbullying and take drastic measures. In January 2010, ABC’s Good Morning America reported the suicide of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince in Massachusetts. Apparently, she was severely harassed online by many of her peers. One peer suggested that she hang herself and then she did. One thing I found appalling about this article is that even after death she was being harassed. The authors of the article reported “on a memorial page dedicated to the Massachusetts teen who had recently committed suicide, Facebook members left taunting comments that had to be removed.”

The article also goes on to quote Internet safety expert and privacy lawyer Perry Aftab. Aftab explains the reason cyberbulling is harder for kids to deal with is that cyberbullying isn’t just left at school. The bullies can infiltrate your home, school and even “your grandma’s house”. It seems that unless a child who has fallen victim to cyberbullying disconnects from the cyber world it is really difficult for them to escape this kind of bullying.

Massachusetts’s police investigated the murder and at the time, there was a call for a statewide anti-bullying law. At the time, 41 states already had such laws in place. 23 states at the time had laws against cyberbullying. I believe that creating laws that protect teenagers from this kind of bullying will encourage teenagers to report the incidents. It will also help protect teenagers before they reach the state that Prince did. Prince’s story is an unfortunate story of the worst-case scenario of cyberbullying.