Cyberbullying has become prevalent and has received public attention especially within the few years. Though cyberbullying is done online, the effects can make one feel as though the attacked is everywhere. Cyberbullying can take many forms, and the effects can be long lasting.

A common form of cyberbullying is harassment. Online harassment is a deliberate act of sending abusive or offensive messages to an individual or group. The harassment is usually well planned and repeated. Messages of harassment that are constantly repeated over a period of time, can have an adverse impact on the victim. Victims of harassment may lose their confidence or self-esteem in society. Cyberstalking is also a form of harassment. A cyberbully may send messages to threaten the victim. Apart from being offensive, the messages may further threaten the victim’s physical safety.

Flaming is another major kind of cyberbullying. It is the intentional use of inflammatory language against someone. To make it worse, the bully may decide to broadcast the offensive messages to embarrass the victim in a public space. Cyberbullies who employ flaming often do it with the aim of eliciting a reaction from the victim.

Another form of cyberbullying is outing. Outing involves sharing a victim’s private messages, pictures, or other information on the internet. People’s information is publicly shared without their knowledge or consent. The intention is to humiliate, shame and embarrass them. This type of cyberbullying usually takes place on a larger scale rather than interpersonal or in a smaller group.

People who indulge in cyberbullying may also log in to other people’s social media profile and post inappropriate content in their stead. This act is referred to as fraping. The contents posted can range from a funny video to explicit images or videos of the victim. Fraping can embarrass, tarnish the reputation of people, or even get them into trouble.  

Also, cyberbullies can wittily exclude others from their existing messaging, social media, event and chat platforms. This is done purposely to have a conversation that such excluded persons cannot have access to. Most often than not, the group members may then proceed to say cruel or rude things about the excluded persons without their knowledge.

Moreover, a bully may assume another identity to harass the victim. The bully may either impersonate someone else, use a person’s genuine account details or phone number, or create an entirely fake identity. This is to ensure anonymity of their true identity. Shielding one’s identity for the purpose of harassing others is known as masquerading.

Cyberbullying can have a lot of negative effects on the bullied. The deliberate spreading of falsehood about people, or posting contents to embarrass them on social media can affect people mentally, physically and emotionally. Worst of all, contents of cyberbullying can last as long as the internet does.

REFERENCE

Information from www.unicef.org,  www.online.maryville.edu , www.verywellmind.com, www.verywellmind.com was used in this story