Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Cyberbullying

In our day and age of technology, the term "cyberbullying" has become an unfortunate necessity in our vocabulary. Now, children (adults included!!!) must fear not only those that prey on others in the school yard, looking to take others' lunch money, but also those that lurk in the depths of the internet. The site stopbullying.gov reports that 7% of students in grades 6-12 experienced some form of cyberbullying in the 2013-14 school year. And that's just the students that seek help and report what they went through!

In 2009 when I was a freshman in high school, the site formspring.me was incredibly popular amongst students. The now nonexistent site was a question-and-answer-based social networking site where people, either anonymously or through their Formspring account, could ask each other questions. As with most things where anonymity gets involved, people abused the question site, choosing to bully and harass users. A girl who I had a few classes with and was a bit of a Luna Lovegood-type received some of the nastiest messages that I've had the displeasure to read. Obviously hurt by what she encountered online, "Luna" eventually deleted her account.  Thankfully, she bounced back, brushing off the haters and moving on with her life. Others who were more troubled were not as lucky, possibly pushed over the edge because of the harassment they received online.

I wish I could have done something to help "Luna" but I did not realize what was happening until it was too late. We need to look out for one another on the internet as best we can. As in real life, there's creepy people out there who take pleasure in other's misery. Only we can stop them. If you notice something not quite right online, most sites have a report feature. Do what you can to ensure that the internet's a welcoming place!

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