Bullying and Cyberbullying
Being bullied can leave you feeling up the creek, humiliated, dejected, or even suicidal. But there are ways to guard yourself or your child at school, online and how to deal with a bully.
What is bullying?
Bullying is frequent destructive comportment that can be physical, verbal, or interpersonal, in-person or online. Bullies are often inexorable, bullying over and over again for extended periods of time. You may animate in persistent fear of where and when the bully will attack next, what they’ll do, and how extreme they’ll go.
Physical bullying – encompasses hitting, kicking, or bashing you (or even just threatening to do so), as well as stealing, whacking, or ruining your belongings, and hazing, harassment, or degradation.
Verbal bullying – encompasses name-calling, bantering, provoking, insulting, or otherwise verbally abusing you.
Relationship bullying – encompasses declining to talk to you, excluding you from groups or happenings, spreading deceits or rumors about you, making you do things you don’t want to do.
Lads and youngsters frequently bully using physical threats and activities, while girls are more likely to engross in verbal or relationship bullying. But no type of bullying should ever be endured.
What is cyberbullying?
Technology means that bullying is no longer restricted to schoolyards or street turnings. Cyberbullying can happen anywhere, even at home, via smartphones, emails, texts, and social media, 24 hours a day, with hypothetically hundreds of people intricate. Cyberbullies use digital technology to pester, threaten, or disgrace you. Contrasting traditional bullying, cyberbullying doesn’t necessitate face-to-face contact and isn’t limited to just a handful of onlookers at a time. It also doesn’t require physical supremacy or strength in numbers.
Cyberbullies come in all shapes and sizes—nearly anybody with an Internet connection or mobile phone can cyberbully someone else, often without having to disclose their true individuality.
Cyberbullies can torment you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the bullying can track you anywhere so that no place, not even home, ever feels benign. And with a few clicks the embarrassment can be witnessed by hundreds or even thousands of individuals online.
The techniques kids and teens use to cyberbully can be as speckled and ingenious as the technology they have access to. They might range from sending threatening or provoking messages via email, text, or social media, to breaking into your email account or pilfering your online identity to miff and humiliate you. Some cyberbullies may even craft a website or social media page to aim at you.
As with face-to-face bullying, both boys and girls cyberbully, but tend to do so in dissimilar ways. Boys are incline to bully by “sexting” (sending messages of a sexual nature) or with messages that lurk physical damage. Girls, on the other hand, more usually cyberbully by spreading deceits and buzzes, revealing your secrets, or by eliminating you from social media groups, emails, buddy lists so and so forth. Because cyberbullying is so easy to execute, a child or teen can easily change characters, going from cyberbullying target at one point to cyberbully the next, and then back again.
The effects of Bullying and Cyberbullying
You’re made to feel miffed, annoyed, anxious, stranded, disheartened, isolated, humiliated, and even awkward that the bullying is somehow your fault. You may even sense suicidal.
Your physical health is expected to suffer, and you are at a larger risk of emerging mental health problems such as depression, low self-esteem, anxiety, or adult onset PTSD.
You’re more probable to miss, skip, or fall out of school to evade being bullied.
In many cases, cyberbullying can be even more excruciating than face-to-face bullying because:
Cyberbullying can happen anywhere, at any time. You may experience it even in places where you’d normally feel safe, such as your home, and at times when you’d least expect it, like during the weekend in the company of your family. It can seem like there’s no escape from the taunting and humiliation.
A lot of cyberbullying can be done anonymously, so you may not be sure who is targeting you. This can make you feel even more threatened and can embolden bullies, as they believe online anonymity means they’re less likely to get caught. Since cyberbullies can’t see your reaction, they will often go much further in their harassment or ridicule than they would if they were face-to-face with you.
Cyberbullying can be witnessed by potentially thousands of people. Emails can be forwarded to many, many people while social media posts or website comments can often be seen by anyone. The more far-reaching the bullying, the more humiliating it can become.
How to deal with a bully
There is no meek resolution to bullying or cyberbullying, or an infallible way to handle a bully. But since bullying or cyberbullying is hardly limited to one or two incidents—it’s far more likely to be a constant attack over a period of time—like the bully, you may have to be persistent in reporting each and every bullying incident until it discontinues. Remember: there is no reason for you to ever put up with any sort of bullying.
Don’t blameworthiness yourself. It is not your inaccuracy. No matter what a bully says or ensures, you should not be embarrassed of who you are or what you sense. The bully is the person with the problem, not you.
Try to outlook bullying from a different perspective. The bully is a doomed, exasperated person who hungers to have control over your feelings so that you feel as gravely as they do. Don’t give them the consummation.
Don’t exhaust yourself up. Don’t make a bullying incident eviler by dwelling on it or construing cyberbullying messages over and over. Instead, remove any messages and focus on the constructive experiences in your life. There are many magnificent things about you so be gratified of who you are.
Learn to manage stress. Finding vigorous ways to dismiss the stress generated by bullying can make you more robust so you won’t feel incredulous by negative experiences. Exercise, meditation, affirmative self-talk, muscle relaxation, and breathing exercises are all virtuous ways to manage with the pressure of bullying.
Tips for dealing with cyberbullying
Dealing with cyberbullying is hardly easy, but there are measures you can take to cope with the problem. To start, it may be a decent time to reevaluate your technology use. Spending less time on social media or testing texts and emails, for example, and more time networking with real people, can help you aloof yourself from online bullies. It can also help to condense apprehension, depression, and feelings of lonesomeness.
As well as pursuing support, managing anxiety, and spending time with people and doings that bring you pleasure, the following tips can help:
Don’t reply to any messages or posts written about you, no matter how spiteful or fictitious. Responding will only make the situation worse and aggravating a response from you is exactly what the cyberbullies want, so don’t give them the fulfillment.
Don’t pursue revenge on a cyberbully by becoming a cyberbully yourself. Again, it will only make the problem shoddier and could result in stern legal implications for you. If you wouldn’t say it in person, don’t say it online.
Protect the evidence of the cyberbullying, keep insulting text messages or a screenshot of a webpage, for instance, and then report them to a reliable adult. If you don’t report incidents, the cyberbully will often become more destructive.
Report intimidations of harm and unsuitable sexual messages to the police. In many cases, the cyberbully’s activities can be impeached by law.
Preclude communication from the cyberbully, by stalling their email address, cell phone number, and scrapping them from social media contacts. Report their actions to their Internet service provider (ISP) or to any social media or other websites they use to target you. The cyberbully’s movements may establish a violation of the website’s terms of service or, depending on the laws in your area, may even deserve illegitimate charges.
Special Concerns
With the dominance of social media and digital forums, comments, photos, posts, and content shared by individuals can frequently be beheld by strangers as well as consociates. The content an individual shares online – both their personal content as well as any adverse, nasty, or hurtful content – creates a kind of perpetual public record of their views, accomplishments, and behavior. This public record can be believed of as an online character, which may be accessible to schools, employers, colleges, clubs, and others who may be investigating an individual now or in the future. Cyberbullying can harm the online standings of everyone involved – not just the person being bullied, but those doing the bullying or contributing in it. Cyberbullying has exclusive concerns in that it can be:
Determined – Digital devices offer a propensity to immediately and uninterruptedly communicate 24 hours a day, so it can be challenging for children undergoing cyberbullying to find respite.
Perpetual – Maximum information communicated electronically is everlasting and public, if not reported and obliterated. An undesirable online reputation, including for those who bully, can influence college admissions, employment, and other extents of life.
Hard to Notice – Because teachers and parents may not hear or see cyberbullying taking place, it is tougher to diagnose.
References:
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/abuse/bullying-and-cyberbullying.htm
