Recently, a youth organization called Pro Juventute has reported a “significant increase” in calls from teenagers who are bullied via the Internet. Pro Juventute further states that one out of five teenagers are bullied but don’t know where to turn for help. This particular event has brought my attention to an alternate and perhaps more vicious form of bullying – in modern terms it is known as cyber bullying. Arguably worse than regular bullying, cyber bullying attracts awareness to its victims, and oftentimes maintains a lifelong effect on that victim. Cyber bullying is an unexplained event that has never occurred in the past, which is why there are many observations that need to be made about this new phenomenon.

Unfortunately, cyber-bullying is just one of the many downsides of the arrival of technological advancements. People like Mark Zuckerberg create social networks such as Facebook with hopes of contributing to the causes of the technological revolution, but little do they know that they have just invented a new form of bullying and defacement. The statistics only get worse, with 52% of students in the U.S. reporting being cyber-bullied. What makes cyber-bullying different and more severe than bullying, however, is not the median which is used, but the impact of the aftermath made to the victim. We have to note that remarks can possibly be forgotten, but there is no chance that something recorded via the Internet, such as teasing remarks made through social networks, will ever be erased. Technology has aided us in keeping track of information, but sometimes, that information might just come back to haunt us in the future.

Additionally, cyber bullying increases the awareness of a victim at a much higher proportion than both regular bullying and teasing. Bullying can oftentimes be contagious, but in schools, the group of bullies couldn’t get any larger than it is now. With expedited updates through the internet, and a much lost sense of humanity, more netizens are attracted to cyber bullying. Bullying through the internet is easy because it reduces the guilty conscience of a person because he is not actually physically harming or teasing anybody; the internet wrongly gives one a false sense of security and sense of impunity to punishment. Unfortunately, there are too many instances of teen suicide due to the fact of cyber-bullying that we are left questioning the benefits of technology.

Bullying itself is an event that makes us, as humans, ashamed of ourselves. It reveals the occasional cruel nature in people, which is consequently why we bear the seeds to our own destruction. The most we can do is to prevent bullying in general to the best of our ability; in the end, it’s all a display on how much respect we hold for ourselves and others.