Cyber bullying: how and why people do it

In a survey of 500 teenagers from Queensland and New South Wales, it was found that one-third of the respondents had been bullied. Only 5% admitted that had bullied others, 30% had bullied face-to-face while 70% cyber-bullied.

People prefer to cyber-bully for the following reasons:

• Cyberbullying gives illusion of anonymity
• Reduces social inhibitions
• Reduces fear of discovery
• Power imbalance is altered
• No non-verbal clues to intent
• Vastly increased audience
• Bully does not have to see immediate effect on victim (reduces empathy)
• Instantaneous and no time-of-day or location restrictions (Bauman, November 3, 2007)

There are a number of avenues available to an individual who wishes to cyber-bully, these include the following:

• Instant Messaging (IM)
• Chatrooms
• Trash polling sites/ defamatory websites
• Blogs
• Email
• SMS Text messaging (texting)
• Happy Slapping
• Doing all of the above on social networking sites like myspace.com or facebook.com

It has been found that the highest rate of cyber-bullying is from another student at school (46%). Thirty eight percent of individuals did now who was targeting them, 34% were targeted by a friend, 32% from a stranger and 16% by a sibling (Bauman, November 3, 2007).