Cyber Bullying

In today’s fast world, technology has spread its wings rapidly and proved to be beneficial and efficient. However, everything has its side effects. According to the most famous quote, “Excess of anything is bad.” So, same is the case with today’s technology. Many negative or immoral purposes or criminal intention have come in view. Its easy accessibility has, drastically, increased the percentage of cyber-bullying.

Cyber-bulling is a form of online harassment that is considered to be one of the various subcategories of cyber-violence. (Have Wald, 2008).

           Cyber-bullying takes place through blogs, pages and social networking websites. It’s a negative trend that is rapidly increasing among the users of internet. As a teen, I’m exposed to all kinds of online drama and bullying. If you just log on to social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, it won’t take you too long to find a status, message or comment with an insult or threat in it. I personally wonder why it has to be like this. The bullying continues via SMS and websites, and, the information spreads so quickly that it is hard to remove it from the victim's site. Unfortunately, in most cases, the culprit is difficult to find out. It is always committed willfully in order to annoy or harm the victim through threats, insults or sexual remarks with all the secrecy about the sender’s name.

            Cyber-bullying, like any other form of bullying, may cause great emotional and psychological stress, and, in extreme cases, can also become a cause for any personal damage or loss. In fact, cyber bullying has more psychological effects than traditional playground bullying. Sometimes, it results in suicide which is called cyber-cide. They are not only tough kids who bully, but usually the weak, quiet, shy, type kids tend to be more involved because it hides their identity.

            Cyber-bullying can cause depression, stress and pain to it victims . According to modern research, female victims get affected by it more than the male sufferers through feeling more self-pity and despair, where as male victims feel more angry and vengeful when find themselves unable to deal with the threats, unwanted messages or emails, or, insulting remarks, etc. And, many times, frustration  over powers them so badly that they are unable to concentrate on the real world issues such as academics, co-curricular activities, family matters and responsibilities etc.  Thus, they may end up harming themselves.

Cyber bullying is a social crime that should be rooted out at all possible cost. It’s our duty to save maximum people from the evil by fighting against it. Cyber-bullying has brought attention of media, parents, and law  enforcement agencies, but unfortunately, no specific law has been made against it. I believe that governments should take a practical stand against such criminal activities.

By: Ummamma Pervaiz Siddique

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