Combatting Cyber Bullying: The Bitter Trolls online

If any other title for this post could suffice, I’d choose “Nurturing Values and Self-Esteem: A Vital Remedy in the Digital Age.”

October is cyberbullying awareness month. With this theme in mind let’s see why it is necessary to develop values and self-esteem instead of crowdsourcing them and exhausting ourselves online.

What is cyberbullying?

Social media has become a haven for insecure trolls who make it a hobby to target individuals with deep insecurities. When people are traumatized due to online bullying, they often don’t project it onto someone else; instead, they exhibit signs of low self-esteem, lack of confidence, and a feeling that they are not good enough. Cyberbullying encompasses various forms, such as picking on people’s profiles, insulting, embarrassing, making derogatory remarks publicly via fake accounts, threatening, blackmailing using private pictures, body shaming, and more.

Forms of cyberbullying:

• Harassment: Sending threatening or blackmailing messages.
• Harassment: Sending threatening or blackmailing messages.
• Cyberstalking: Sending intimidating messages and collecting information about the victim.
• Trickery: Tricking the victim into trusting that he/she is talking to a trustworthy person in confidence. Luring them to reveal personal information.
• Outing: Posting private information of a person online without their permission to cause harm or hurt.
• Exclusion: Intentionally excluding one person from group activities to make them feel left out. This occurs in multiplayer games and group chats.

Well, it’s just Bullies…Ignore them!

It’s more than that for the person being bullied on an online platform. The online world has made it so easy for someone to take their anger and negativity and project it onto someone else like a punching bag. Insecure and weak people have made it a hobby to ruin someone’s day for no reason at all! While it’s important to address the issues that the trolls have to deal with within themselves, it is proper to have the tools handy with the victim to deal with. Not being able to cope with offensive events can lead to problems as such:

• Teens can develop eating disorders, post experiencing a cyberbullying event.
• A sudden shake in the body…inability to speak and respond as if you got a shock. This is something most people admit to when asked about how they felt when they were in an uncomfortable situation being trolled.
• Some change behavior, unexpectedly and negatively affecting their own personality.
• Avoiding social gathering events.
• Self-sabotaging behavior — like being the class clown. Doing anything for approval and likeability.
• Becoming quieter or withdrawn.
• Finding it hard to concentrate on daily tasks.
• Losing interest in hobbies.
• Skipping school or expressing a desire to skip school.
• Appearing angry when looking at their phone, tablet, or computer
• Hiding their phone or computer screen from view.
• Using drugs or alcohol.
• Expressing dark thoughts or self-harming behavior.

On top of it, the bullies’ troubles can even reach the families of victims and cause distress.

According to 2019 research, nearly 15% of the cohort (~20000 people) accept that they had been a victim of cyberbullying. How does it range across different age groups?

The highest levels of cyberbullying were observed among young adults aged 18–25 years. However, older age groups, including those aged 26–35 years (24 percent) and 46–55 years (13 percent), as well as individuals aged 66 and above (6.5 percent), also reported significant instances of cyberbullying throughout their lives.

Why do people cyberbully?

Most bullies have low empathy for others that’s why they use technology. A cyberbully has an unstable balance at a social and emotional level. So, they find it much easier to use the keyboard and take it out on people online. He/she finds power in that setting where it is okay for them to engage in a matter that doesn’t have to do anything with them but still make remarks or comments to demean the owner of some content online.

Did you troll someone?

• A bully is more at the chance of engaging in self-harming behavior and addictions as well. Accept it and change what you need to change within yourself.
• Which means it makes them more likely to face mental health issues and emotional instability.

“I did it for the LULZ”

That’s a popular catchphrase used to express that one carried out a specific action for the sake of personal comic enjoyment. This is sometimes used to explain why one has posted offensive, far-fetched, or disgusting content online and in discussion forums. There’s a plethora of this kind of content which is inappropriate. How is it identifiable? You may read a meme text and the image which immediately tells you. This was not necessary. Highly prevalent online especially on social media sites like Twitter and Instagram.

Solutions and Strategies

• The family: Family is mistaken with relations; it is more than that. More than a support system, it is a reason for life, and it would be a 100% true fact to say it is family for what we improve.

Ask yourself as a parent, if your kid experiences this negativity online, will they come to you talking about it? Are you willing to help them? Do you have the skills to understand their emotions? If not, do you know the right people to solve it? Build meaningful and healthy relationships with your family and friends. Understand that these matters are serious and deeply affecting. High chance are the victim is keeping it to themselves. Be observant of any signs of emotional distress as listed previously.

Gather evidence of the event and report it to concerned people when required. Report it to the police department if it reaches a point where physical harm is intended.

• Choose your circle wisely:

If you let that friend joke about you to others, you’ve sidelined your own values to be likable. Cyberbullying is more prominent in existing friends or former friends. Especially in past romantic relationships. It grows bitter, trading secrets turn into revenge-seeking behavior.

• Realize:

That there are endless people who may have opinions about you. But it is your perception of yourself that matters. A troll doesn't define you who are. Be true to yourself. As the famous line goes “Don’t Let ’em say you ain’t beautiful” from the song by Eminem.

• Be compassionate:

Report any oppressive behavior you come across online. Flag and report. Try to separate from getting engaged by adding to the malicious intended bullying posts, and comments. Sharing of content like this normalizes the bad behavior of trolls. Take a defensive stance against it.

Online bullying is most times more damaging than real-world bullying. Parents and folks before the internet know bullying as something they might have seen happening in the classroom, the playground, or in a public space of those likes. The case there was always bad but mostly you would find a single bully or a group of handful bullies and a victim. A victim mostly the school-going child almost always had a friend who knew about the event that occurred and was a lending hand full of support. That’s not the case in today’s online world. It may start when the victim is alone and at times, they may not be expecting anything offensive. And it hits suddenly, a storm of comments and likes on those offensive comments, more replies and derogatory remarks. And there lies the victim witnessing all of that alone.

• Be careful what you share and keep it private:

The internet is a public space. Think of it that way. Consider your values before sharing anything on it and be aware of the consequences of that. Sharing emotions online or venting about an actual event in life is not necessarily opening doors to good advice from cyber friends. In fact, they don’t even need to know you to use your emotional outlet. Cyber friends are not cyber therapists.

You don’t have to share private photos with people online in order to establish meaningful relationships and partners.

• Don’t live on social media:

Getting out and meeting people face-to-face is how empathy is developed. Stay in touch with the physical realm. At a young age, we tend to absorb more than what we can put out. Getting in a practice of doing good for the personal benefit, then for the people who matter to us and the society in general is the key to drastically improving the whole stance of people and their online presence. Start as soon as possible. Parents need to learn this and pass it on to their kids at an early age as these challenges will come to them ready or not.

Lastly, I want to mention that if we as a society fail to address these issues, it breeds more undesired behavior in the long term just as with old-school bullying. Having a dedicated talk with the person who was at the receiving end of a trolling event about why it happened and what issues it may lead to, if not addressed maturely should help come out the gates with a good strategy.

Cyberbullying is a serious matter and can have lasting consequences on a person emotionally and reveal physical distress at extreme ends too. Take a position, start a club spread this post. Do anything but ignore cyberbullying. Carrying out awareness programs and management events can be a great first step towards resilience and a safer online kingdom, and you are the most important key to it.