Cyberbullying Needs To Be Addressed
Cyberbullying happens everywhere with anyone. You could get cyberbullied, your siblings could get cyberbullied, even your friends or parents. As long as technology exists, cyberbullies are everywhere. They are everywhere because it is so easy to get away with cyberbullying if you just fake an identity. Some people may even become a cyberbully without even knowing it, you could go online and try to defend someone and then it could turn out that you are the one being the bully. Regardless of who or where the cyberbullies are, there needs to be something that fully addresses this issue because whatever it is that addresses it already clearly isn't doing a good job. There are still cyberbullies, and there are still victims that are hurting, and it needs to be stopped. Cyberbullying should be addressed everywhere for everyone because it can cause suicide, it can cause distractions, and in some cases it cant even be stopped unless addressed.
Suicide
First of all, cyberbullying should be addressed because it can cause suicide.
In this article, it says, "38% of frequent bully-victims reported suicidal thinking or a suicidal attempt during the past year." This is significant because people have been suicidal and attempted suicide because of cyberbullying. If cyberbullying was more addressed, this percentage would drop. On a more personal note, I have a friend who is a freshman in high school who was and still is being cyberbullied by anonymous people online, and there has been countless of many times where she has felt like committing suicide. If she ever did, I know her family and her friends will be in so much pain, and so will I. Cyberbullying does not only effect the victims life, but others as well, and once the victim commits suicide, it is all of a sudden a huge issue. Don't wait on another person to commit suicide just to decide whether cyberbullying is a problem. There is always a problem when there is death involved, even the slightest thought of doing it, and the fact that cyberbullying is the main cause of this proves that it should be taken more thought into.
This infographic shows the negative effects of cyberbullying.
Distractions
Not only does cyberbullying cause suicide, cyberbullying should be fully addressed also because it distracts and disrupts work, school, and other important places in life.
In this article it says, "in 12 of 15 school shooting cases in the 1990s, the shooters had a history being bullied." Since then, there are different ways of being bullied. Cyberbullying has become more popular than the traditional bullying and its way more crueler. It would not be so surprising if the chances of school shooters having a background of being bullied have increased. In an article called "12-year-old Nevada middle school shooter was bullied: left two suicide notes" it says, "two classmates were wounded and a school was in panic." This shooting effected the entire school, maybe even the district because they had to try to get back to where they were in the learning environment. Although its always the shooters choice on what he or she does, cyberbullying should still not be a factor of what caused them to want to shoot. At school there has been many of times where students have disrupted class by yelling at each other across the room about something mean one of them said to the other on instagram or twitter. This cost the whole class to stop what we were doing. Therefore, cyberbullying causes unwanted drama which is why it should be addressed.
This is infographic on students skipping school because they are too focused on worrying about the bullies.
Cyberbullying Can't Be Stopped Unless...
In addition to causing distractions, cyberbullying should be more addressed also because in some cases cyberbullying will not stop unless it is addressed. In the movie cyberbully, nobody could do anything to punish or stop the cyberbullies because there wasn't a law against it. In cases like this cyberbullying is allowed and will probably keep happening if there is nothing against it. The same friend mentioned in the second paragraph hasn't been able to make the cyberbullies stop because she has reported two pages already, but those same bullies just make another anonymous account and constantly spam her. In order for it to stop completely she would have to delete her account and never create a new one (she's already deleted one and the bullies found her new one). This shouldn't have to be a problem if the cyberbullying on this website was more and better addressed.
But Isn't Cyberbullying Already Addressed Enough?
One may argue that cyberbullying shouldn't be fully addressed because it already is.However. an article on change.org says, " so, in all 50 states only 34 have laws against cyberbullying." America isn't really all that safe if there are states not against cyberbullying. There's a saying that says "if not against, then for." There are suicides on the news all the time because of cyberbullying. If it really was addressed then there wouldn't be so many suicides.
Cyberbullying should be more addressed because it cause suicide, drama, and it can't be stopped unless addressed. To help cyberbullying be more addressed you could write a letter or email to a social media website and maybe even make a page on change.org. Cyberbullying is one of the main causes of suicide, please don't forget that.