How Social Media Can Have An Impact On How Young People Are Treated Online

Blog post #4

Hello once again, Bloggers and blogger enthusiasts!

Thank you for having a read of my previous blog post, I hope you enjoyed reading it and it was insightful. My previous blog post discussed the impact social media can have on the way young people see themselves, for example what they think of their body and the way they look compared to people they see online (Instagram).

This blog post will be about how social media can have a big impact on how young people are treated online and how they treat others online as well. This is something that many schools, adults and industries do not tolerate, and that is cyber bullying.

Due to the vast development of technology, face to face bullying has become something of the past. People have now moved on to bullying through technology. This can be done through the use of phones and the internet. This allows a person to bully another person at any time of the day, especially through social media because it is always active.

There are many forms of cyber bullying which includes: flaming, harassment, cyber stalking, denigration, masquerading, outing and exclusion.

Flaming

This involves the electronic transmission of angry or rude messages.

Harassment 

This involves repeatedly sending insulting or threatening messages.

Cyber stalking 

This involves threats of harm or intimidation.

Denigration

This is a method used to put down people or spread cruel rumours.

Masquerading 

This involves pretending to be someone else and sharing information to ruin a person’s reputation. 

Outing 

This involves revealing personal information about a person.

Exclusion 

This method is used to maliciously leave a person out of a group online, such as a chat line or a game and gang up on one individual.

All seven of these methods are an effective way of bullying someone online and need to be put to an end, as these methods can affect people very badly which can lead to serious health risks. Certain health risks such as depression, anxiety and in some even worse cases, suicide. 

(This will be discussed further in a future blog post).

Cyber bullying often takes place due to relationship difficulties, such as the break-up of a friendship or romance or envy of a peer’s success. This can lead to prejudice remarks about people’s gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or disability.

So what can be done to put an end to this? 

Well the most fundamental way is to attempt to prevent cyber bullying in the first place. 

This can be done by creating school e-safety policies and informing young people of informative websites that are available, for example, the NSPCC or ChildLine.

These kinds of helpline websites help lots of children around the UK who deal with abuse on and offline. 

Many schools now train pupils in e-safety and ‘netiquette’ to equip them with the vital tools that they will need to understand the harsh reality of the digital world. An effective technique to stop cyber bullying is to block bullying behaviour online by clicking the report button on social media sites.

To conclude, I will leave you with this to think about:

What else do you think can be done to prevent cyber bullying? Let me know what you think in the comments section. I look forward to finding out what you think.

Keep an eye open for my next blog post.

As always, until next time…