by Mr. Frozen » Mon May 22, 2017 9:20 pm
Well, I am not the type to beat around the bush for the sake of not hurting one's feelings so I may come of as ridiculously insensitive and mean, but I understand. See, here is a more detailed breakdown as to what I was getting at:
The internet is a form of escapism for people who do not enjoy the real world. Having someone infiltrate your world of escapism and harass you may seem even worse than someone who may harass you in real life because the internet world is your safe space. The problem is, categorizing cyberbullying into something on its own just legitimizes the original problem which drove them into the cyberworld to begin with. It is kinda like a morbidly obese person who cant fit through a door and then has teenage kids laughing at him. The obese person feels ultra embarrassed at this and lashes out on the kids and everyone else, saying that they shouldn't be made fun of. Laughing at the person is a shitty thing to do, but the real issue here is that the person is embarrassed about their weight, which in turn made them feel bad about someone laughing at him getting stuck in the door. Shutting up the kids who are laughing doesn't help the root cause (feeling bad about their weight), which leaves the obese person open to being emotionally harmed by future situations that will occur because of the main problem.
But then again when I was growing up, the internet wasn't as vital to communication as it was today. Wikipedia just became a thing when I was in highschool, and facebook wasn't even open to the public in my early 20s. Today kids are likely not to use the internet as a form of escapism, but rather as a way to stay in contact. But this makes it easier to ignore people, I think, since you can literally just block anyone who is trying to bully you. Then again I am thinking about this with an adult mind, it is hard for me to understand why a child would continue to allow someone to fuck with them constantly on the internet (same as why kids allowed themselves to get bullied in school), and it is probably a more complex issue (feelings of inferiority, helplessness, etc...). Which brings me back to my previous point.
The focus needs to be kept on what is causing people to be insecure enough to be affected by these forms of harassment, not the actual harassment itself. Of course you can get the law involved in the most extreme cases, but that doesn't change the fact that the emotional damage has already been done.