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).

How often does Cyber bullying occur?

• 42% of kids have been bullied while online. 1 in 4 have had it happen more than once.
• 35% of kids have been threatened online. Nearly 1 in 5 have had it happen more than once.
• 21% of kids have received mean or threatening e-mail or other messages.
• 58% of kids admit someone has said mean or hurtful things to them online. More than 4 out of 10 say it has happened more than once.
• 53% of kids admit having said something mean or hurtful to another person online. More than 1 in 3 have done it more than once.
• 58% have not told their parents or an adult about something mean or hurtful that happened to them online.

Based on 2004 i-SAFE survey of 1,500 students grades 4-8 (I-Safe, 2009)

What can parents and schools do?

It is difficult for any parent or school to bring cyber bullying to an end due to the effectiveness and range of new media and communication. However, both parents and schools do have the power to stifle its affects.

Schools:

• Can introduce acceptable internet use policy in which students must agree terms and conditions of use
• Introduce permission slips for the use of mobile phones on school grounds which parents must sign.
• Prohibit phone use during class time.
• Work with parents in providing support and advice.

Parents:

• Take responsibility and monitor the use of the internet outside of school.
• Discuss with their children what is and what is not acceptable behaviour online.
• Develop an agreement as to when and internet access is allowed as well as how to protect their identity.
• Encourage children to come to them if they feel threatened or uncomfortable.
• Contact the parents of the cyber bully and ask for the behaviour to stop.
• Save and forward the harassing message to your service provider to restrict the cyber bullies access to the internet.
• If there are threats of physical violence etc contact the police.

Source: Beale & Hall (2007)

Preventing Cyber bullying

While the methods of child bullying are often diverse, limited only to the access of technology available to the bullies, the results are often the same. It can lead to someone, often a teenager, feeling hurt, depressed, and isolated. In some extreme cases it has even resulted in suicide.

Despite its widespread nature there is still little recourse available in terms of preventing Cyber bullying, and limited methods of dealing with it after the fact.

Preventative Methods:

The main preventative methods aim at educating those that might participate in cyber bullying, the implications their actions might have, and putting a face on what they might otherwise see as a faceless crime. Preventative methods focus on cautioning teenagers to think before they forward on an offensive video, or send an offensive message to someone, as it isn’t a faceless crime, and it does have consequences, such as the loss of the IM or ISP accounts, or the loss of a friend due to carelessness on their part. Other means of preventing cyber bullying might be to educate kids to take a stand against bullying in all its forms, and teaching other moral behaviour. However for this method to work the teenagers would also have to be educated in exactly what constitutes cyber bullying, as it is possible they do not see the harm which their actions might cause.

Other means of staying safe is to avoid putting yourself in a position open to ridicule, this can be achieved by:

• Never posting any private information online, no matter how safe and harmless the website appears. (this includes e-mail address, phone number, home address, etc)
• Keep your various accounts (eg: Facebook, LiveJournal, Blogspot) private, as opposed to open to all public viewing.

Putting a Halt to cyber bullies:

Since the reasoning behind cyber bullying is different for each bully there is no single technique to stop cyber bullying once it starts. However some of the most commonly used methods include:

• Talking to a trusted teacher/ parent
• Seeking outside intervention (eg: police/ website admin)
• Blocking their pathways of attack or ignoring them. The reasoning behind this is if you don’t react the bullies are more likely to get bored and move on.
• Know your legal rights and be willing to act on them.
  

Sources: National Crime Prevention Council (2009) & WiredKids, Inc (N.D)

Cyber Bully personality test

Engaging in Cyber Bullying »

School Yard Fight

Ways in which cyberbullying can occur

'A. Flaming involves sending angry, rude, or vulgar messages directed at a person or persons privately or to an online group
B. Harassment involves repeatedly sending a person offensive messages
C. Denigration is sending or porting harmful, untrue, or cruel statements about a person to other people
D. Cyberstalking is harassment that includes threats of harm or is highly intimidating
E. Masquerading is pretending to be someone else and sending or posting material that makes that person look bad or places that person in potential danger
F. Outing and trickery involve engaging in tricks to solicit embarrassing information about a person and then making that information public
G. exclusion describes actions that specifically and intentionally exclude a person from an online group such as blocking a student from an IM buddies list' (Beale & Hall, 2007).

Examples of bullying online from u-tube

Here are a range of comments placed on U-Tube, these types of comments are commonplace online.

LZATL1396

Bullying drives people crazy. I never bully people ... and this is the honest truth, because one day, that kid will just fucking snap. and come into school with a gun and shoot every fucker he see's. but then he'll look at me and remember I never picked on him. SCORE!

MeltedCreamsicle

i flame people all the time on the internet why beacuse i get a good laugh no im not stupid no i dont have a screwed up life its cause makeing pricks like her (with all respect) get agravated seriously here in america i wont be censored and if i am then i will move on when someone kills themself over anykind of ordeal i dont care if you have no limbs i have no sympathy for you when they made the internet they knew that people wouldsay what they wanted and lol noone can ever stop that

blest4159

What was done to this poor girl was purly wrong no matter what any of you you say i am the age she would be now 16. and i believe there should be drastic action against online bullying. what was done was heartless and just wrong and never should of happened.. and to all of you who dont think so....... fuck you.. P.SQuamieReturns your a complete asshole and one day you wil get what is coming too you

ducartech

you look like a fat ass crack whore
you piece of shit
i hope you DIE

ooweirdoo (3 days ago

life is about survival and if you can't even withstand emotional attacks, then you don't deserve to live
:))))))))
MOAR OXYGEN

All The Single Ladies

A selection of the bullying comments:

Shangtown (13 hours ago)
your a vile, vile creature

Jvizzle (1 day ago)
he's so fat he shook the cam lol!!!!

Ayemeebabyy (1 day ago)
&& what would your wife or girlfriend say when they see this??
don't have 1??
jayzees!!!! i can see y!!
fucking queer!!


(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTegy6sBQVA)

Block Bullying Online Clip

Consequences and case examples of Cyber-bullying

In 2002, Ghyslian Raza, a teenager from Quebec was targeting by cyber bullies who stole and uploaded a video to Kazaa of the teen performing Star Wars lightsaber moves. The video was widely circulated and visited over 76 million times by October 2004. The teen was embarrassed and became ‘mentally ill’ after the instance. His parents decided to take legal action and sued the parents of the four cyber bullies. An out-of court settlement was reached with ‘the families of three former schoolmates they had sued for $351,000 in damages’ (Tu Thanh Ha, April 7, 2006).

In October 2006, 13 year old Missouri girl Megan, commit suicide after being cyber bullied from a boy named ‘Josh.’ ‘Josh’ was found to be a mother from her neighbourhood posing as a boy on MySpace to gain information from Megan about her own daughter. After the conversation turned nasty one day, including comments that she was a ‘liar,’ ‘slut’ and that the ‘world would be a better place without her’ Megan hung herself. The defendant, Ms Drew, ‘was convicted by a federal jury in Los Angeles on three misdemeanour counts of computer fraud for having misrepresented herself’ on MySpace. This amounted an ‘unauthorised access’ to a computer site violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act 1986 (Mail Online, November 19, 2007).

Star Wars Kid

A selection of viewer responses:

Maicheung (2 weeks ago)
You might think he is a retard, but he is now well known even though for something not that great. Plus because of the assholes that stole his phone and posted this he managed to get 160,000 from them

Temekoo (4 weeks ago)
fucking retard

RiceBowl (3 months ago)
for some reason. i feel better about my self after watching this

Pigstine (4 months ago)
why would some1 sue some1 just 4 cyberbullying

Legislation in Australia

Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth)

Under section 474.15(1) a person (the first person) is guilty of an offence if

(a) the first person uses a carriage service to make to another person (the second person ) a threat to kill the second person or a third person; and

(b) the first person intends the second person to fear that the threat will be carried out.

The maximum penalty is imprisonment for 10 years.

Under section 474.15(2), a person (the first person) is guilty of an offence if:

(a) the first person uses a carriage service to make to another person (the second person ) a threat to cause serious harm to the second person or a third person; and

(b) the first person intends the second person to fear that the threat will be carried out.

The maximum penalty is imprisonment for 7 years

Under section 474.17(1), a person is guilty of an offence if:

(a) the person uses a carriage service; and

(b) the person does so in a way (whether by the method of use or the content of a communication, or both) that reasonable persons would regard as being, in all the circumstances, menacing, harassing or offensive

The maximum penalty is imprisonment for 3 years

“carriage service” means a service for carrying communications by means of guided and/or unguided electromagnetic energy

Section 545B of the Crimes Act 1900 (Cth) states:

(1)

Whosoever:

(a) with a view to compel any other person to abstain from doing or to do any act which such other person has a legal right to do or abstain from doing, or

(b) in consequence of such other person having done any act which he had a legal right to do, or of his having abstained from doing any act which he had a legal right to abstain from doing, wrongfully and without legal authority:

(i) uses violence or intimidation to or toward such otherperson … or does any injury to him …, or

(ii) follows such other person about from place to place, or

(iii) hides any tools, clothes, or other property owned orused by such other person, or deprives him of or hinders him in the use thereof, or

(iv) (Repealed)

(v) follows such other person with two or more other persons in a disorderly manner in or through any street, road, or public place, is liable, on conviction before a Local Court, to imprisonment for 2 years, or to a fine of 50 penalty units, orboth.

(2) In this section:

Intimidation means the causing of a reasonable apprehension of injury to a person or to any member of his family or to any of his dependants, or of violence or damage to any person or property, and intimidate has a corresponding meaning, and Injury includes any injury to a person in respect of his property, business, occupation, employment, or other source of income, and also includes any actionable wrong of any nature