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What is a Cyberbully ?
You may ask yourself what is a cyberbully and how are they different from regular bullies? There are different types of cyberbullies and different ways to handle them. A cyberbully is different from the traditional bully at school. A cyberbully can harass, tease and humiliate another while remaining completely anonymous hiding behind the mask of a computer. Often times a cyberbully does not have the ability to bully his/her victim face to face. Anonymity gives the cyberbully a sense of power, courage and strength.
Very often a cyberbully is simply the victim of another cyberbully. When you defend yourself from a cyberbully by answering a hurtful message with another hurtful message, you become the cyberbully yourself. You may not consider yourself a cyberbully, however when you take a closer look, you actually may be.
Cyberbullying happens in many different ways – in text messages, emails and online games, and on social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook.
Examples of cyberbullying include deliberately and repeatedly:
- posting or sending messages that threaten people or put people down
- leaving people out of online games or social forums
- spreading nasty rumours online about people
- setting up unkind or unpleasant fake social media accounts using real photos and contact details
- trolling or stalking people online
- sharing or forwarding people’s personal information without their permission
- posting insulting or embarrassing photos or videos of people without their permission
- harassing other people in virtual environments or online games.
Cyberbullying can happen at any time of the day or night, anywhere there’s internet or mobile access.
○What is cyberbullying?
○What are the impacts of cyberbullying?
○Are there cyberbullying roles?
○What do you do if you are being bullied?
○What do you do if you see bullying?
○How can you be an upstander?
Activity 1:Solve the crossword about cyberbullying
2-Class Exercise
Read each scenario below. For each scenario, discuss with a classmate how well you think the person in each story below handled cyberbullying and how you might have handled it differently.
Scenario 1:
Sami began receiving rude emails from an email address she did not recognize. The emails ridiculed her hairstyle and the clothes she wore to school, so she assumed that the emails were from someone she knew. Sami decided to delete the emails and not tell her parents because she did not want to lose internet privileges.
Did Sami handle the incident well? If not, how could she have handled the situation differently?
Sami did not handle this situation as well as she could have. Sami did do the right thing by not responding to the emails, however, she should have saved the emails as proof of the incident. Also, Sami should have immediately told her parents or another trusted adult.
Scenario 2:
David received a friend request from Charlie. He had met Charlie once or twice but did not know him very well. To add to his growing number of friends, David accepted the friend request. Soon after, Charlie started posting strange photographs on David’s timeline. David quickly consulted his parents who advised him to send Charlie a private message asking him to stop. When Charlie continued to post these photos on David’s timeline, David “unfriended” Charlie on Facebook and blocked Charlie from seeing his Facebook account. He then reported the photographs Charlie had posted to Facebook.
Did Charlie handle the incident well? If not, how could he have handled the situation differently?
Charlie handled the incident well. He saved the emails, told a trusted adult, and also reported the photographs to Facebook administration.
Reflection
- Have you ever witnessed an instance of cyberbullying? What happened?
- What are some steps the victim could have taken in a cyberbullying situation?
- What are some steps that bystanders could have taken in a cyberbullying situation?