Bullying can be defined as repeated aggression, verbal, psychological or physical conduct by an individual or a group against others. Bullying of any kind is always wrong and should never be tolerated or ignored under any circumstances.Cyberbullying refers to any bullying which is carried out using the internet, mobile phones or other forms of technology. It is also often part of a wider form of bullying. It can take place in the form of sending cruel, nasty or threatening emails, messages, photos or video clips, silent phone calls, posting nasty, mean or threatening messages on a message board, website or chat room, saying hurtful things in a chat room; pretending to be someone else in a chat room or message board or accessing someone’s account to make trouble for them.
It’s important to understand that bullying by its very definition is not a once off isolated incident. Posting a once-off nasty comment on someone’s profile or uploading photographs intended to embarrass someone is not very nice and can be hurtful but it is not, by itself bullying.
Bullying is widely agreed to be behaviour that is sustained or repeated over a period of time which has a serious negative effect on the well-being of the victim and is generally deliberate.
Different ways technology can be used to Cyberbully
Technology can be used to cyberbully in several different ways:
Personal intimidation- This behaviour includes sending threatening text messages, leaving abusive or threatening comments on websites or on the victim’s social media page.
Impersonation-This behaviour involves setting up fake profiles and web pages in the name of the victim. It can also include gaining access to someone else’s social media or instant messaging account and using it to contact or bully others while impersonating the victim.
Exclusion-This behaviour involves blocking the victim from a popular group or community such as a school or class facebook page.
Personal humiliation- This behaviour involves posting images or videos online with the purpose of embarrassing or humiliating someone. It can involve posting images or videos intended to embarrass or humiliate someone. It can involve users sharing and posting images or videos of victims being abused or humiliated or users sharing personal communications such as emails or text messages with a wider audience than was intended by the sender.
False reporting- This behaviour involves making false reports to the service provider or reporting other users for a range of behaviours with a view to having the user’s account or website deleted.
