What is cyberbullying? Important things to know about

Posted by John Smith on November 22nd, 2019

When we talk about cyberbullying, we mean one of the main concerns for fathers, mothers and the educational community. The definition of cyberbullying in Wikipedia refers to the term virtual harassment or cyberbullying and "is the use of digital media to harass a person or group of people, through personal attacks, disclosure of confidential or false information among other means."

To this definition, we must add the key factor that this situation is repeated continuously over time. We are talking about an evolution of the term bullying to which we incorporate the term cyber since this occurs through digital devices or media (smartphones, social networks, forums, email, webcam, and etc.) and that, so, Therefore, it aggravates the situation, since it can occur for 24 hours.

Cyber bullying is one of the risks of social networks that is considered a crime, and that when it happens in the school environment it threatens the rights of children as it undermines their well-being and prevents the development of their school activity, causing fear, damaging the image and affecting such important issues as freedom of expression or mental health of schoolchildren.

Characteristics and types of cyberbullying:

When identifying a case of cyberbullying we must take into account the most common characteristics in which cyberbullying occurs.

- The mobile phone is the main tool of cyberbullying with 90% of cases.
- The use of the computer or tablet barely reaches 20% of cases.
- The most common form of cyberbullying is through WhatsApp (80% of cases).
- Social networks account for 36.2% of cases of school cyberbullying.
- The insult is the cause of bullying in 81% of cases of cyberbullying and the vast majority refers to the physical characteristics of the victim (36%), revenge and aggressiveness of the bullies (10% in both).
- Threats account for 37% of the causes of bullying.
- The third way or cause of cyberbullying is the dissemination of rumors (11%) about the victim and in some cases, the impersonation in social networks.

In the case of cyberbullying, harassment for the victim is daily in 71.8% of cases and 38% have been supporting this situation for more than a year.

Cyberbullying can occur either in the form of a threat with private messages or through comments or mentions on social networks whose objective is to ridicule the victim.

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John Smith

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John Smith
Joined: June 21st, 2014
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