Cyberbullying and Its Harmful Effects on Teens

Cyberbullying and Its Harmful Effects on Teens

Teens have nowhere to hide. Cyberbullying is increasing alongside of advances in technology. Most teens now have access to electronic communications and the Internet, making them easy targets for cyberbullying. Cyberbullies are using e-mail, cell phones and the Internet to cause emotional harm, harass, threaten, ridicule, and exert control over their victims. Additionally, cyberbullied teens are committing suicide at an alarming rate. Cyberbullying must be stopped; it poses psychological trauma and health risks, affects social interpersonal skills, and can ultimately cause suicide. A Cyberbully is able to breach every part of its victim's life, and keeping teens safe in cyberspace will be a challenge that parents, educators, and law enforcement officers must face and defeat.

To begin to understand why cyberbullying poses a risk for psychological trauma, as well as other health risks to teens, one must understand a teens' brain, which is a work in progress. Teens lack fully developed judgment and impulse controls until they transition from childhood to adulthood. The brain's frontal lobe (involved in making judgments and plans) is slower developing than the brain's limbic system (associated with emotions and drives), which causes increased emotional stress, and emotional storms. Teens lack fully developed judgment and impulse controls until they transition from childhood to adulthood. "During the early to mid-teen years, self-esteem falls and, for girls, depression scores often increase" (Myers 85). Teens are often impulsive, irritable, uncommunicative, rebellious, risk-takers, sleep-deprived and friend-oriented. At any one time teens can be experiencing one or more of these conditions, not thinking before acting, as well as not considering consequences before taking risks (Hopkins). Teens who are cyberbullied experience depression, anxiety, difficulty concentrating and often want to miss school. Teens who receive these texts and view cyberbullying online also feel nervous and anxious over the exposure (D'Antona). Texting has become the teens' preferred communication, along with communicating through social networking site with a posted profile and picture.

Which leads to another vile action perpetrated by cyberbullying is taking advantage of teens sending a sexually explicit picture via mobile phone or posting the picture online, which is called sexting. Teens must be made aware these images can with the click of a mouse be transmitted to thousands. These images can harm their reputation, as well as having long term consequences impacting their future such as higher education choices. School nurses can help by educating teens and parents to both prevent legal action that may result from sexting and cyberbullying and to alert them to the emotional stress that often goes along with these behaviors. A cyberbully can also strike at its victim by setting up websites that ridicule, as well as using chat rooms, blogs and social media sites that are available to all who wish to participate. A cyberbully can post untruths, damaging lies, personal information, photos and secrets about a victim and transmit the information to an entire student body with another click of a mouse. Once the information is out in cyber space, whether it is true or not does not matter. Other can view it and expand on it to even greater levels of cruelty. In cyber space the victim is not in front of the perpetrator, and other teens become braver and willingly send or forward mean messages to others. Unfortunately many teens have the misconception that text messages disappear and are only between the sender and the recipient. Not true. These messages become part of cyber space and can be retrieved. Bystanders make it easier for the cyberbullying to continue and by reading the material they are participants and equally responsible for the hurt (D'Antona).

Most people associate bullying with boys, but cyberbullying by girls is more common. Sameer Hinduja of the Cyberbullying Research Center states "[g]irls tend to target each other with labels that carry particular meanings for them" (Holladay 5). Girls will harass other girls by using unfavorable slang terms such as, "slut," and "whore;" whereas boys harass other boys by attacking their sexual preference. Whether it is a girl or boy doing the bullying, the results are just as lethal. Teens act impulsively, giving no thought to right or wrong, rhyme or reason, causing situations to escalate. Additionally, teens who are victims of cyberbullying can become terrorized, live in constant fear, and will often suffer other lasting wounds (nightmares, depression, binge eating, or aggression), placing them at increased risk for health problems, psychological disorders, substance abuse, and criminality (Myers 78). The National Crime Prevention Council reported that in 2006 approximately 43% of teens had reported being cyberbullied during the previous year. Additionally, a 2009 Pew study showed 75% of teens owned a cell phone, as well as 73% of teens used a social networking site. Cellular cyberbullying can be done by threatening calls, voicemails, or text messages. In 2009, "ninety percent of U.S. teens . . . were sending 50 or more texts daily . . .; and 75 percent were using [social media] sites" (Myers 250). Mental health professionals are seeing a rise of cyberbullying among teens, and are urging primary care physicians to educate their young patients on the topic. Additionally, they are urging physicians to screen for possible victims and perpetrators, since such incidents can "result in anxiety, depression and, in some instances, suicide among those involved" (Moyer). Dr. Karnik, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the University of Chicago clinic, began noticing a rise of complaints about online harassment from his patients, and stated: "We do see more of this happening, [partly because] it's so simple to do, . . . It doesn't require you to stand in front of a person to bully them" (Moyer). To identify potential victims and perpetrators of cyberbullying, physicians need to ask all their patients who use the Internet what they do online, and to specifically inquire whether they use social networking sites and ever felt as if they were harassed. Physicians who encounter cyberbullying first should assure victims that they are not at fault, then should determine their level of danger for self-harm and for acts inflicted by others and take appropriate steps to alleviate the dangers. On the other hand, if patients admit to cyberbullying, physicians should help them identify their actions as a problem, and then involve the parents or guardians in the situation. If physicians can intervene early enough, teens can be protected from a great deal