ON BULLYING
Gómez, Macarena
Language V
2014
Is Social Media Helping Bullying to Get Worse Than Ever?
We can find many types of aggression in the society in which we live in. Bullying is one. Not only exists physical bullying but also emotional, verbal and even cyber-bullying. According to the website www.stopbullying.org, “Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance”1. Nowadays, many people do not know that social media exposes children to these aggressions. Bullying does not only happen in real world. It can also arise in the virtual world where many children and adolescents spend a lot of time.
Although it was not known by this name, bullying is not a new phenomenon. Today, Social networks are helping to its expansion. Although social media is blameless, through it bullying can reach everyone. The use of social networks ricochets and magnifies bullying because, as the website “Stop Bullying” argues, cyberbullied children have a harder time getting away from the aggressors. Likewise, this type of aggression “can happen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and reach children even when they are alone”2. As said before, the problem is the inappropriate use of social media. While social networks can be used for positive activities, such as finding friends and chatting with them, looking for and sharing information, many children and adolescents use them to harm others. Numerous people think that social networks are harmless for children only chat with their friends and share information. However, this is false. Through social media, they are really exposed to cruelty and they can easily become cyberbullies themselves. A research done by “internetsafety101.org” pointed out that in 2011, one million children were harassed, threatened or subjected to other forms of cyberbullying via Facebook3.
Social media exposes many children and adolescents to cyberbullying, even after school