Cyberbullying using social media as weapons

Bramhacharimayum Sadananda Sharma *

Apart from our physical identity now a days we do also need to maintain a virtual social media identity, and when it comes to social media identity the social media platforms has played an important role. The rapidly growing social media has changed the directions, many people giving more importance in virtual lives than ever.

Also Social media platforms are the places where we "showcase" our living experiences. They also mirror a variety of scope regarding our position in the virtual and physical social life. Because of this both the factors make people to play different characters in the social arena.

With the advancement of Technologies and many IT-Companies sectors, easily accessible Internet facilities, affordable Smartphone can also be one of the factors of Social network in gaining more and more importance in today's world.

Social media enables identity expression, exploration, and experimentation; something that is natural in a Society which encourage the internet communities and the interactions they make within themselves. It is also required to comprehend and understand the motives of using group interactions on social platforms.

Communicating online offers many ways to connect with others, yet many people are putting extra effort in social media now more than ever. Apart from their study activities they tend to socialize with friends and family members. In fact, chatting using social media medium is one of the means they communicate with others. But just like any other social activity, the opportunity for bullying do exists.

When a person uses the Internet or any online platform with an intention to harass, threaten, embarrass or target another person, comes under Cyberbullying. Earlier, the victims of cyberbullying were mostly teens but the case spread and even adults started to experience cyberbullying and public shaming as well.

Some of the most common Cyberbullying strategy happens in our society are using a camera phone to record a video and later share a bullying incident, downloading a video of something humiliating and posting it to YouTube and Facebook in order to allow a larger audience to view the incident.

Such incident creates and causes another person to become upset or emotional breakdown. And to be mentioned this type of activity is often referred to as Cyberbaiting.

In some recent incident, a video of one-hour length, we do never worry or be concerned to share any quality content or message that the video wants to convey to us. Instead, we put more efforts and time to find out mistakes, just to make fun out of it. They crop, cut, edited and even manipulated the message of that video.

Subsequently, they uploaded in social media. And the most surprising part is that people in social media do support and encourage such activities leading to viral in social media and some people even posted inflammatory comments and sickening words over this.

Imagine that person who is giving the interview or TV show, how much efforts and research works they must have put before they went live in the show. He or she must be working believing in mind that this work of mine will help our society in some ways.

But, that confidence, spirit, and enthusiasm disappeared in matter of seconds when our appreciation and support is focus in trolling and bullying on their mere mistakes.

We often talk and debate about why there is no proper medium for expression of thoughts and ideas in our society. Obviously, it will be hard for anybody to stand up in this system where mass bullying is high however appreciation and supports comes out very rare from our own public.

We are not all perfect, that's why we discussed and debate in public domain for a collective good, we do make mistakes, but that doesn't mean we have the right and privileges to tear down someone's image and prestige.

In fact, Cyberbullying involves using social media, Smartphone, text messages and online apps as tools and weapons. But going in depth they are not the only main problem. Cyberbullying occurs because of the choices the User or the individual's person makes.

When analyzing the root cause of this type of unwanted incidents, restricting our child's digital access or taking away electronic gadgets will not prevent them from being cyberbullied.

In fact, they will find one way or other even creating a fake profile without our knowledge and can lead to involvement in serious unwanted activities. Instead of controlling our child's online access, lets us focus our efforts on educating our child and youths about the risks of cyberbullying.

Talking in casual manner to them about how to make smart choices online and how to report cyberbullying if it occurs.

Keeping an open dialogue with our kids and youths about cyberbullying is the most effective way to deal with the issue and let us not encourage such acts of bullying in any online platform even among our friends or families.