Cyber Bullying

Introduction

In this study we try to explore the concept of bullying in a holistic context. The main focus of the research is on bullying and its relation with teenagers. The research also analyzes many aspects of bullying at schools and colleges and tries to gauge its effect on our youth. Finally the research describes various factors which are responsible for bullying and tries to describe its overall impact on teenager students.

Cyber Bullying and its effects on teenagers

Members of today's college and university communities have unprecedented access to a wide range of technology, including e-mail, blogs, cell phones, and social networking Web sites. Faced with these technologies, an emerging legal challenge confronting today's teenagers, faculty, staff, and community members in the world of higher education is how to address legal issues relating to cyber bullying, a relatively new form of high-tech incivility and harassment using the Internet. Consequently, this entry focuses on the issue of cyber bullying and its growing impact on the higher educational community (Astor, 149).

Cyber bullying is defined as the use of communication-based technologies, including cell phones, e-mail, instant messaging, text messaging, and social networking sites, to engage in deliberate harassment or intimidation of other individuals or groups of persons using online speech or expression. Student bullying and harassment are considerably more common at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Even so, a recent study of bullying on college and university campuses reveals that more than 60% of teenagers indicate that they have personally observed a student bullying or harassing another student (Astor, 149).

Discussion and Analysis

The online cruelty and harassment uniquely associated with cyber bullying has recently become popular among teenagers due largely to the virtual anonymity of online communication, which makes it extremely difficult to identify bullies or instigators of online bullying or harassment. Also, the limitless reach of the Internet allows the online content of cyber bullying to well surpass the confines of college and university campuses when compared to traditional bullying, with which the impact is considerably more controlled (Astor, 149).

One of the most popular and publicly accessible online venues for cyber bullying in college and university communities was a Web site called Juicy Campus. Until it was officially shut down in February 2009, this popular Web site was designed exclusively for teenagers in higher education for posting online, anonymous, and uncensored gossip about their classmates and instructors. Advocates of the Juicy Campus Web site argued that it fostered student free speech and expression. However, critics of the Web site maintained that it actively encouraged cyber bullying against other teenagers and faculty members in the form of negative smear campaigns, threats, and racist and sexist remarks targeting other teenagers. During its short existence of less than two years, the Juicy Campus Web site was the subject of numerous instances of violent, online threats (Brady, 92).

Nancy E. Willard, executive director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, has identified the following seven major types of cyber bullying activities: (Brady, 92).

Flaming: this implies a ...