Cyber-bullying

Cyber bullying is any form of bullying which takes place online or through smartphones and tablets. Social networking sites, messaging apps, gaming sites and chat rooms such as Facebook, Xbox Live, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and other chat rooms can be great fun and a positive experience. Cyber-bullying can be 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the internet doesn’t have an on off button.

How...?

There are different forms of cyber-bullying as listed below:-

Gossip: Posting or sending cruel gossip to damage a person’s reputation and relationships with friends, family, and acquaintances.
Exclusion: Deliberately excluding someone from an online group.
Impersonation: Breaking into someone’s e-mail or other online account and sending messages that will cause embarrassment or damage to the person’s reputation and affect his or her relationship with others.

Harassment: Repeatedly posting or sending offensive, rude, and insulting messages.
Cyber stalking: the repeated use of electronic communications to harass or frighten someone, for example by sending threatening messages.
Flaming: Online fights where disrespectful and offensive messages are posted on websites, forums, or blogs.
Outing and Trickery: Tricking someone into revealing secrets or embarrassing information, this is then shared online.
Cyber threats: Remarks on the Internet threatening or implying violent behaviour.

Who can be targeted?

Anyone can be targeted but you are more vulnerable to cyber-bullying and online abuse if you post content into public domains for example a YouTube video or a photograph shared publicly on Facebook or another social network.

Why would someone be targeted?

Anyone can be targeted. if you are bullied, it is not your fault.

There may be many reasons why the bully feels they are warranted in targeting you. It could be because you are different in anyway for example, your race, religion, sexual orientation or identity or because you have a different view or perspective. In any case there is absolutely no excuse for bullying in any way. Cyber-bullying has no limits. It can also be related to, or a continuation of real world bullying.

Indirect retweets, sharing or the creation of nasty quotes is classed as indirect cyberbullying and is hard to tackle.

Impact of Cyber Bullying

For many cyber bullying affects their everyday lives and is a constant source of distress and worry.  With mobile technology being so freely available it is an ongoing issue and one that is relentless.  Not only does it go on after school, college or work has finished, but it then carries through into the next day and the cycle continues.  It has been well documented that cyber bullying has resulted in tragic events including suicide, and self-harm and clearly, more needs to be done in order to protect vulnerable children and adults from online bullying. 

For more information around the impact Family Lives is a useful source as well as NSPCC

For more information see How to combat cyber-bullying page and Cyber-bullying resources page.