The Impact of Cyber Bullying

One of many current events that has impact the school counseling profession is known as cyber bullying. As we formally know bullying as taking one’s lunch money, or even bossing someone around to prove a point. A new innovation of bullying has come and taken control and it is done through computers, and cell phones.

What is cyber bullying?

Cyber bullying is an indirect aggression behavior that is used as an insult, harassment, intimidate, threaten or to taunt another person (Raskauskas & Stoltz, 2007). Cyber bullying is classified as interpersonal or indirect attack because it is a deliberate attempt to impose direct or indirect harm on peers through manipulation and damaging peer relationships (Berger, 2007). Cyber bullying has a non-physical approach such as making fun of another person, teasing, lying on another person, saying mean statements, gossiping about others. All of these non-physical actions are down through the internet such as blogs or Facebook, cellphones texts and pictures and any other forms of technology that is used in a non-positive way to attack an individual in an indirect way.

Cyber bullying is a new innovation to bullying because it allows people to attack victims in a non-physical form 24 hours a day. This new form of bullying allows victims to be assaulted at any time of the day (David-Ferdon & Hertz, 2007). The cyber bullies make it hard to manage within the school system and ajar the door for more youth to take part in this type of conduct. The use of cell phones has made it easy to attack victim examples of sexing, and texting. The use of computer has made it easy to attack victims through sources such as Facebook, Twitter, emails, and blogs.

Prevalence of Cyber Bullying

The facts are that cyber bullying can occur anywhere such as school and home, but research shows that during school hours are when the most consequences occurs. There is a growing understanding that these outer events harmfully affect the functioning of students at school and the home environment (David-Ferdon & Hertz, 2007). Research also shows each individual such as the bullies and the victims have specific effects of cyber bullying. They both shows low performance with academic, social, and life at home (David-Ferdon & Hertz, 2007). Both the victim and bullies exhibits low self-esteem, insecurities that may prevent them from concentrating in the classroom setting.

The victim of cyber bullying has also been connected to the development of general psychological distress and poor psychosocial adjustment (Raskauskas & Stoltz, 2007). In a study connecting victims of cyber-bullying, 31% of students victimized reported being very or extremely upset, 19% were very or extremely afraid, and18% were very or extremely embarrassed by online harassment (Raskauskas & Stoltz, 2007). It has also been found that repeated acts of cyber bullying have been shown to threaten healthy development of self-esteem in youths and contribute to school failure and dropout (Raskauskas & Stoltz, 2007) and increase psychological symptoms such as depression and anxiety (Raskauskas & Lynch, 2007). Tremendous cases of cyber bullying have led to adolescent suicide (Raskuaskas & Stoltz, 2007).

Although, being a bully has also been linked with poor psychosocial change, as well as failure in late adolescence and early adulthood (Raskuaskas & Stoltz, 2007). Adolescent bullies when they mature are not as socially and emotionally developed in contrasted to their peers. They are settled in to belittling others for their own satisfaction and need help from professionals to guide them into changing negative physics into more positive ones. These