ullying is mainly centered in power, just like real-life bullying. And similarly, sometimes a good "punch," or a denial of service, is all it takes to make a bully back down.
For example, police recently arrested a British teen and released him with a warning about harassing Olympic diver Tom Daley online, after the athlete said he wanted to win the gold to honor his father, a victim of brain cancer. When Daley didn't medal, the 17-year-old tweeted, "You let your dad down i hope you know that."
Being online also gives some people a sense of power they don't otherwise have, and they take advantage of it. After all, when you're online, particularly on Twitter, nobody knows how big you are, or how strong, or where you are. And often, there are very few repercussions for cyberbullying, beyond being kicked off Facebook or Twitter — and any teen knows how to get around that by creating a new, fake profile.
Psychologists say attacks increase when people can't see the faces of those they're harassing, and this sense of bravado increases when they don't think they'll get caught.
Since all non-verbal cues like body language and tone are removed online, it's easy to let a situation escalate, experts say, meaning people who would never throw a punch in person have no problem throwing verbal jabs at each other behind the protection of a hashtag.
How Do You Fight a Cyberbully?
Even if a teen doesn't realize he or she is being bullied, they still know when someone's harassing them. And for a person whose self-esteem may be low anyway — as is the case with many teenagers by nature — a cyberbully or a group of them may chip away at their self-worth, sometimes with tragic consequences.
And even if teens are reporting being cyberbullied less, they're not equating that with harassment, which could be much more subtle but every bit as dangerous. Experts suggest teens be very careful online, whether on a computer or mobile device, and limit their contacts to only the safe people they know — and block the rest.
Cyberbullies — just like those bullies back in the day on the playground — target people over whom they believe they'll have some power. And when teens start reporting those bullies to their parents, to Facebook and Google, or even to school leaders, they have an opportunity to take away the harasser's power.
If that starts happening more often, future studies will continue to report these most recent findings that cyberbullying isn't the epidemic people think, and cyberbullying will lose some of its power.
This article originally published at Mobiledia here