My Thoughts on Cyberbullying

As a teen who is fresh out of high school and was in the age when technology was very prominent in our communication, I am very familiar with cyberbullying and social media. I don't think that bullying is acceptable for anyone, adult or child but we also have to think, how can we stop it? The answer is, (well in my opinion) that it will never stop because it is just human nature. Now, just because I don't think that it will end because we are humans and it is just in our nature sometimes to be mean and nasty to other people that we shouldn't be held accountable for our actions.

• School

In times when we were all in high school, rumors could affect anyone whether they were true or false. An easy way to accomplish the embarrassment of a fellow student would be to post something embarrassing about them on social media or humiliate them with a demeaning post about them. And other times there were/are posts that will show a video of people physically harming another person and it will be posted on social media to embarrass someone in the video or to show that they are weaker than the person that has the upper hand. I don't think that this is acceptable at all and I think that the school should put rules about this into place because it can cause an unsafe environment for a child/children who are attending the same school as the people who watched the video or for the people who were in the video. When you are in school, you should feel as if you are in a safe and non-threatening environment. Everyone deserves to feel safe at school.

• In Adulthood

As adults, we are expected to act a certain way. We are expected to have a better sense of maturity and empathy to the people around us. The internet is a medium where we can act childish anonymously. Believe it or not, there are a lot of adults who participate in cyberbullying every day. Some people choose to show their faces as well to show that they are courageous in what they are saying and they don't care what other people think. I have very mixed feelings on this subject. On one hand, the internet is not a place where everyone should cater to everyone else's delicate sensibilities. It is very easy to just click the [x] button to get out of a page if you don't like what you are seeing. It is also very easy just to ignore what people are saying. I don't think that the internet is a place where everyone can be comfortable all the time. That being said, I still believe that we have consequences to our actions especially when it involves harming someone. And if someone is being nasty and mean to someone over social media I believe that we have the right to call them out (if it's even worth it).