Cyber Bullying-Exploratory Essay

Cyber bullying has been a topic for Psychologists, Parents, and policy reform since the commercialization of the Internet. Pre-internet bullying involved socially marginalized children and teenagers picking on their friends and other marginalized children in the school yard. Traditional discipline included detentions, phone calls to their parents, and some sort of reconciliation between the children involved. Today however, the climate for bullies has dramatically changed and the risk-reward balance has been significantly tilted in favour of the bullies. Today, bullies can simply connect to the Internet and create aliases (real or anonymous) through free e-mail services, instant messaging services, and social networking services. They then use these means to effectively bully someone without the victim ever knowing who they may actually be. Psychologists believe that cyberbullying is a major cause of teen depression now days. They also believe that cyberbullying can cause several long term effects such as social awkwardness, mental issues, depression, and much more. Some psychologists believe that when patients come into their office with severe depression issues they should ask questions about cyberbullying or bullying in general. From the parents point of view they feel as though there should be laws against cyberbullying. Many fear that their child could become a victim of cyberbullying and that scares them. Some feel that the internet should have more guidelines to help prevent the things that happen to some people. Victims of cyberbullying are another perspective. They know more about the issue than any of the others. They are in the action and see and feel how it works. The victims want cyberbullying to stop and want laws be made up in order to stop it. I believe that cyberbullying should be stopped. I believe cyberbullying is much worse than physical bullying. I believe that the effects of cyberbullying have a much bigger effect on victims of cyberbullying then most people think.