Behind the Screens
On September 22, 2011, a student at Rutgers was murdered by cyberbullying. The news reports claim that the death was caused by a suicide, but I object. The death was caused by the relentless torment of cyberbullying. The man who jumped was a homosexual who previously had an affair in his dorm room. His roommate maliciously placed a video camera in the room before the homosexual man had the affair. The homosexual repeated the act again on September 21, 2011. After realizing that both affairs had been publicized by his roommate, he jumped off the New York City’s George Washington Bridge just a day later, ending his life and beginning this story. (Washington 22).
How many lives must be taken for the magnanimity of this issue to become apparent? Imagine the potential in all the lives that were unnecessarily taken from this world by cyberbullying. To understand the issue, one must familiarize themselves with what cyberbullying is. Cyberbullying is defined as the act of harassing someone online by sending or posting malicious messages, usually anonymously. Words, however, cannot express the anguish felt by the people whose lives are thrown into chaos and an incessant cycle of worry. Although the proliferation of social media has connected millions around the world and has allowed for facilitation of communication, it has also become a vehicle through which the age-old concept of bullying is able to manifest itself. In the absence of regulation, the extent to which cyberbullying is practiced will increase in both scope and intensity. The child who does not have the heart to stand up to the one who they are tormented by is depending on propositions like school regulation. Regulation of cyberbullying is a critical and perhaps the only way to remediate this issue. However, before regulation can begin, one must fully appreciate how brutal cyberbullying is to student's mental health.
The statistics all paint a dreary picture of cyberbullying's impact on a victim’s health. For example, in a study of 677 high-school students, more than half of the students (56.1%) had been cyberbullied. In addition, the study found that cyberbullying victims were 2.5 times more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, had a higher instance of depression and were more than 3 times as likely to commit suicide (Davison, Christopher B., and Carl H. Stein). It is a pity that such youthful innocence can be devastated by such depravity. The victim may then exclude the ones who love and support him/her and may feel compelled to keep refreshing his/her social media hoping for some positive remark, therefore giving him/her even more reason to feel despondent when it does not appear. This only compounds the problem and further isolates the victim. Even if a victim isolates his/her family and friends, teachers and school personnel may still be able to mitigate a child’s cyberbullying situation due to the extensive interaction that occurs between school officials and students. Therefore, the pre-existing intimacy between teachers and students should be utilized to reduce the instance of cyberbullying. I acquiesce to the fact that regulation of bullying encroaches on a teacher’s time, but if a teacher is meant to teach, what better way to prepare the mind for learning than clearing the victims mind from the stresses and worries of being bullied? As a compensatory measure, governments could acknowledge the increased productivity of a bully-free school and reward those officials who act against bullying.
The regulation of cyberbullying presents an interesting and multifaceted challenge to schools. This is especially true in a college setting, where regulation of bullying may be misconstrued as an attempt to oppress freedom of speech. While this argument is often invoked to dismiss regulation, I do not find it convincing. I concur with Lee that schools should have the authority to regulate cyberbullying anytime that it involves a student. The explanation is simple. The citation of the first amendment as a solid justification that regulation is an impingement on personal freedom is clearly disproved by the 1969 Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community School District case. In this case, it was determined that “prohibition of a certain expression of opinion [is justified, when failure to do so] would substantially interfere with the work of the school or impinge on the rights of other students (Lee)." By citing this case, Lee is attempting to explain that cyberbullying negatively impacts students' ability to learn and, in this case, regulation is not reprimanded but rather supported. Therefore, regulation in schools has no pre-existing hindrance in terms of the law.
In fact, states such as California, Vermont and Florida already aggressively regulate cyberbullying by making no distinction between bullying that occurs off campus or on campus. In this sense, the origination or site where cyberbullying occurs does not make any difference in the treatment (Lee). This active approach toward recognizing the cyberbullying problem and being impartial to the source of the bullying event in remediating the problem is refreshing. In other words, the school is responsible for students' well-being and cyberbullying that occurs during any time or place impinges on the rights of the students. This reasoning is the same behind many aspects already incorporated into daily life. A doctor is expected to treat a patient in a manner to fix the current ailment or condition. The doctor should not pass judgement on how patient obtained a disease or how exactly a patient obtained a disease when treating him/her. In much the same way, cyberbullying regulation by the school extends to events that occur both on and off-campus. Thus, schools must be allowed to regulate cyberbullying as it pertains to students, no matter where the bullying incidents take place or originate.
Granted that the proposition of regulation has been substantiated, how would one go about regulating cyberbullying? As the above propositions suggest, cyberbullying is a serious issue in this digital age. However, there is a relatively simple method to help victims of cyberbullying effectively. In my opinion, the number one issue that is crucial to the proliferation of cyberbullying is a lack of an outlet. An outlet is a listener who the victim feels comfortable expressing his/her feelings to and who validates the victim's own feelings of sorrow and pain. This is crucial as victims often feel personally responsible for bringing the harassment of bullying upon themselves (Moreno). This seemingly preposterous notion is recapitulated by stories of rape victims, sexual assault victims and many other cases described in news sources where a person is on the receiving end of physical or mental abuse. The mind of a bullied individual is fragile and hypersensitive to any further attacks and thus the listener must be cautious to not inflame the situation. In fact, the word bullying and the negative connotations that permeate the word may prevent people from admitting this is what they are experiencing. Based on personal experience, the sense of emotional relief that is experienced just by admitting to oneself that the bullying is not the result of one’s own actions is the first crucial step on the path to recovery. One of my companions in high school had been personally experiencing cyberbullying and when I listened to his emotions and feelings and assured him that none of this was his fault, the effect on his mood was radical. Though our discussions, he began to improve and molt his shell of fear and return to the jovial individual he once was. For this process to occur, the listener must listen and provide full support to the victim. This not only builds trust between the listener and victim but allows the victim to see through the permeating darkness that envelops them and clouds his/her rational mind. This listening technique is simple but can have important results.
Although, personal communication between a victim and outlet is highly effective, there is much research to be done on bullying and mental cognition. One interesting development is that genetics may play an important role in victim reception. In this case, it was demonstrated that reduced activity of serotonin recycling processes, exhibited by a certain genotype, lead to much higher rates of anxiety and victimization in children who possessed the ineffective recycling system. Serotonin is an important neurotransmitter that is involved in mental perception and imbalances in this molecule often lead to other mental disorders. Although there is more research to be done, it has been clearly demonstrated that victims who have social support systems in place tend to fare much better emotionally and mentally. Once again with effective school regulation and an appropriate outlet, cyberbullying can be effectively minimized. (Brank, Eve M., Lori A. Hoetger, and Katherine P. Hazen).
It is logically and morally sound for schools to address the issue of cyberbullying in order to minimize it. It seems that all arguments against this assertion posit that schools have no right to interfere in the personal life of an individual. However, this argument was legally disproved as discussed previously. Furthermore, when mandatory schooling laws were first enacted, there were heated debates that education itself was an intrusion into the daily of lives of people and that it was an oppression of one’s rights to be forced away from family into school. However, as I have seen multiple times throughout my education, the beneficial the effects of knowledge, extending from simply higher wages, to life-changing discoveries are profound. A striking parallel is exhibited between this situation and that of cyberbullying. Although a school and teachers may have to use some of their limited time to remediate cyberbullying, the benefits of a cyberbully free school greatly outweigh the amount of time elapsed remediating its occurrence. Without cyberbullying, children are self-confident, kinder and have a greater potential for self-actualization. If but a pittance of the school day was used to regulate cyberbullying, perhaps the issue would cease to exist entirely. If we desire to cure this disease we must use the only and best type cure available: school remediation of bullying.
Works Cited
Davison, Christopher B., and Carl H Stein. “The Dangers of Cyberbullying.” North American Journal of Psychology, vol. 16, no. 3, 2014, pp. 594–606.
Washington, Edwina Thomas. “An Overview of Cyberbullying in Higher Education.” Adult Learning, vol. 26, no. 1, Feb. 2015, pp. 21–27.
Lee, Philip. "Expanding the Schoolhouse Gate: Public Schools (K-12) and the Regulation of Cyberbullying." Utah Law Review, vol. 2016, no. 5, Sept. 2016, pp. 831-889.
Brank, Eve M., Lori A. Hoetger, and Katherine P. Hazen. “bullying.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science, vol. 8, 2012, pp. 213-226.
Moreno, Megan A. "Cyberbullying." JAMA Pediatrics. American Medical Association, 01 May 2014, pp. 550.
