Cyberbullying: An Old Behaviour Gone Viral
When it comes to Social Media and Cyberbullying correlation doesn’t always mean causation.
There is always something to blame. Late to class because you slept in? Your alarm wasn’t loud enough. Didn’t get your assignment done on time? The Bachelor finale was airing that night. Gabriella leaving Troy in the emotional cinematic masterpiece “Gotta Go My Own Way”? Sharpay and her meddling ways.
But when it comes to Cyberbullying the cause isn’t as clear cut.
With teen bullying migrating online and the terrible effects it is having on victims, people are beginning to wonder how we can combat this issue. Should we be changing the way social media sites operate? Or maybe attempt to ban certain people from using these technologies? I believe neither.
Out with the Old, in with the New
For decades, society has been concerned about new technological advancements when they are first introduced. From people in 1825 believing trains would rip them apart, to more recently, people fearing that Google is making us stupid. The main difference here, is that although social media is relatively new, the behaviour is not. Therefore, removing the technology from the equation will not address the root of the problem.
Bullying has been present for as long as anyone can remember and has taken many forms. From schoolyard punch ups to Kanye interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. Even graffiti found at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii has been translated to expose some extremely insulting remarks residents have made about one another. The only thing new is the ‘Cyber’ prefix.
A study conducted in Australia found that more students have experienced bullying than haven’t, with 59% of students saying they have been on the receiving end of this behaviour. Additionally, another study found that 52% of these individuals experience bullying at school, followed by 25.3% at the workplace and 25.3% online. This demonstrates how widespread the behaviour of bullying is and although it has established itself online, it’s still extremely prevalent in other forms.
Despite these figures, the Cyberbullying phenomenon is still seen as more frequent than it truly is. This can be accredited to most studies focussing on this behaviour being conducted in isolation, without the context of traditional bullying. Through disregarding other forms of bullying, Cyberbullying is being built up in the eyes of society and the social media sites it occurs on are becoming widely feared.
There’s no Cyberbullying without ‘Cyber’
Of course Cyberbullying wouldn’t exist without the internet. But motor vehicle accidents wouldn’t exist without motor vehicles and we never had wifi connection issues before wifi.
That being said, the presence of motor vehicles and wifi does allow for these things to take place without necessarily causing it. Similarly, there is no denying that social media is the tool these perpetrators are using to attack people when it comes to Cyberbullying, though there is a large difference between facilitating something and causing it. Affordances of these social media sites such as the persistency, spreadability and accessibility of content makes it much easier to target and harass someone.
The persistency means that once someone has made a post or sent a message that they maybe shouldn’t have, it’s hard to take it back. Spreadability allows anyone, anywhere to see the pictures you post or the secrets you send a close friend in a matter of minutes. As content is so easily shared across social media, increasing the magnitude and in turn the severity of Cyberbullying. Accessibility also means that perpetrators can reach their victims wherever they are, whenever they want. When victims return to the safety of their homes, they can still be reached and harassed via their ever-present mobile phone.
However, it is how people choose to use these affordances. People are using this technology to bully, if they weren’t using social media they would still use other channels to harass. When it comes to Cyberbullying, it is not fair to hold a website accountable for a defamatory statement displayed on the page by a third party. Although governments are cracking down on these platforms when it comes to threats and terrorism related posts, Cyberbullying still isn’t these legisaltions’ current focus.
Who pointed the finger at social media?
The blame being placed on social media can be accredited to the Media Effects model. This model suggests that there is a connection between people’s consumption of the mass media and their subsequent behaviour. Cyberbullying began to occur once people started using social media and other similar platforms to bully each other. It would seem then, that social media has caused this ‘new’ behaviour rather than merely facilitating a new kind of bullying, making many members of society afraid of the sites.
This fear has then been enhanced through Technological Determinism. In which people begin to believe the technology has taken on “a mind of its own” leaving us as merely blameless victims to social media’s influence and development.
However, both the Media Effects and Technological Determinism theories are severely flawed. The Media Effects model fails to address and consider the initial social problem to begin with, immediately holding the technology responsible. Whilst Technological Determinism, in the case of social media, cannot prove that these platforms take away individuals’ decision making ability to choose what they post and upload on these sites.
But if not social media, who wins the blame game?
To put it simply, we are the ones at fault for Cyberbullying. How you choose to use technology is how technology is then used. Whether you’ve actively bullied someone online or sat back silently while seeing it happen to another, we are the ones allowing it to continue and we are the ones to blame.
Our words and actions posted to our accounts are an extension of ourselves. And as Mike, the cyber safety expert who gave those annual talks at my school, would say: don’t write or post anything online you wouldn’t want your grandma to see.
Use social media and the affordances it offers to connect with others as opposed to targeting and isolating individuals. If you are not the victim or the bully, you are still seen as a bystander on these sites. As a bystander you have some power in controlling the extent to which someone is bullied. Through social influence, if others see another bystander defend a victim of harassment, they will have higher behavioural intentions to help the victim and be less motivated to support the bully.
Although every victim is different, having a strong support system and feeling understood can help negate the effects their negative experiences can have on their wellbeing. If each individual takes active steps to remain aware of the way they and those around them are conducting themselves online and in real life, we can then begin to decrease the frequency of bullying in all forms.
Cyberbullying is a people problem, not a technology problem and it needs to be treated as such. If we continue pointing the finger at social media the fear and scrutiny of society will continue to be misdirected onto something that does not deserve the full blame. Social media is here to stay and these developments in technologies are never going away. Which means we need to be teaching ourselves and others how to use them correctly as opposed to being afraid of the potential harm they can cause.
To paraphrase The Jackson 5:
Don’t blame it on the Snapchats.
Don’t blame it on Insta.
Don’t blame it on Facebook.
Blame it on the bully
