Cyberbullying is the act of an online user harassing and intimidating another person in the cyberspace. This is sending or posting negative, mean, hurtful or false messages about another person on the internet and on social media sites. Cyberbullying is a problem that arises as a by-product of modern technology. This is a form of attack occurs when one or more individuals use abusive, false or harsh words on social media to intimidate or harm others.
Childhood and teenage age are not only periods of growth, but also of emerging risk taking.
Young people during these periods are particularly vulnerable and cannot fully understand the connection between behaviours and consequences. With peer pressures, the heat of passion, children and teenagers usually perform worse than adults when people are required to maintain self-discipline to achieve good results in unfamiliar situations. Impulsiveness, sensation seeking, thrill seeking, and other individual differences cause adolescents to risk rejecting standardised risk interventions.
About one-third of Internet users in the world are children and teenagers under the age of 18. Digital technology provides a new form of interpersonal communication. However, surveys and news reports also show another picture in the Internet Age. The dark side of young people’s internet usage is that they may bully or suffer from others’ bullying in cyberspace. This behaviour is also acknowledged as cyberbullying among children and teenagers can be summarised as the intentional and repeated harm from one or more peers that occurs in cyberspace caused by the use of computers, smartphones and other devices. In recent years, new forms of cyberbullying behaviours have emerged, such as cyber stalking and online dating abuse.
Although cyberbullying is still a relatively new field of research, this crime among teenagers is considered to be a serious public health issue that is closely related to teenager’s behaviour, mental health and development. The increasing rate of Internet adoption worldwide and the popularity of social media platforms among the young people have worsened this situation with most children and teenagers experiencing cyber bullying or online victimisation during their lives. The confines of space and time are alleviated for bullies in virtual environments, creating new venues for cyberbullying with no geographical boundaries. Cyberbullying exerts negative effects on many aspects of young people’s lives, including personal privacy invasion and psychological disorders.
The influence of cyberbullying may be worse than traditional bullying as perpetrators can act anonymously and connect easily with children and teenagers at any time. In comparison with traditional victims, those bullied online show greater levels of depression, anxiety and loneliness. Self-esteem problems and school absenteeism have also proven to be related to cyberbullying.
Due to changes in use and behavioural patterns among the youth on social media, the manifestations and risk factors of cyberbullying have faced significant transformation. Further, as the boundaries of cyberbullying are not limited by geography, cyberbullying may not be a problem contained within a single country. In this sense, cyber bullying is a global problem and tackling it requires greater international collaboration confirmation is still needed of those factors which have more significant effects on cyberbullying among young people. Clarification of these issues would be useful to allow further research to recognise cyberbullying more accurately.
A challenge for parents and educators is how quickly change happens online. While parents are worrying about teens being bullied online on Instagram or Snapchat, TikTok cyber bullying is becoming common. Moreover, it’s difficult for adults to report cyberbullying when they are often unaware that it’s taking place. Thus, the best approach is to talk to teens about what they’re experiencing. By having on-going open communication, asking questions, and listening closely, parents and mentors of teens may uncover valuable information.
Luckily, there are things you can do to lessen the chances of your teenager becoming a target:Talk early and often about cyberbullying, join the social network yourself, but in “lurk-only” mode, monitor your child’s online reputation, teach your kids about data privacy, don’t respond and save copy and print the evidence.
Some ways of combating cyberbullying among children and teenagers:
Schools should inculcate the habit of teaching children and teenager the proper way of online communications, more policies and regulations should be enacted by the government or relevant regulatory body to guide online interaction and prosecute cyberbullies, parents should be more flexible with their children by establishing a climate of communication between them and social media users should be more careful and mindful of the kind of private information they post online.
Cyberbullying is a problem that arises as a by-product of modern technology and with the fast rise of technology; this is becoming more prominent in social networking sites. Future research will mostly be focused on recollection enhancement because the reduction of manual social media monitoring efforts is the ultimate goal of autonomous cyberbullying detection. The aim is to alert a network’s moderator to as many online threats as possible. Initiatives to prevent cyberbullying and promote cyber-safety are only now being created and evaluated. Parents may get information about how to effectively protect their children and teenagers from websites, tip sheets, and other internet resources. Cyberbullying can be reduced or prevented if the right preventive measures are taken; most especially if the law enforcements agency put together a law or an Act that covers other forms of cyberbullying among children and teenagers.
. Nyitse and Zamani write from Abuja.
—