Cyberbullying and Body Image
Cyberbulling
is something that has become a recent issue within our society particularly
among young people. Many bullies are now targeting people through social
networking sites. In 2006 the MSN cyberbullying report discovered that 11% of
UK teenagers had experienced cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is different
from normal bullying as it can happen 24 hours a day seven days a week and the
person doing the bullying has the ability to make themselves anonymous if they
want to. I don’t know if anyone remembers the social networking site that was
popular a few years ago “Formspring” It was a site where people could invite
online friends to post comments or ask questions anonymously. Many of the
questions and comments were malicious and insulting. I myself never had
"Formspring" but many of my friends did and some of the things people
would post could be extremely threatening.
Cyberbullying
can do serious damage to a person’s self esteem and can lead to issues even
when that person is older. Sadly there have been many cases where
cyberbullying has driven victims to self harm and to even commit suicide. In
October 2012 Erin Gallagher, a 13 year old from Ireland, committed suicide
after she was cyber bullied on social networking sites about her looks and her
weight. Many people called for one of the websites she was using,
"Ask.fm" to be banned. Another case was in December 2012, 15 year old
Jessica Laney from Florida, committed suicide after she was cyber bullied over
her looks and her love life. Again she was also using the website
"Ask.fm" and after her death her friends called for the website to be
banned. Until I came across these two cases I had never actually heard of
"Ask.fm" so I decided to Google this website. I discovered that it
was found in 2010 as a rival for "Formspring" and I also found many
websites that were calling for "Ask.fm" to be banned however this has
not yet happened.
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