Cyberbullying an Attack on Values

Cyberbullying an Attack on Values
Cyberbullying is an attack on the young minds of our society that has slowly creed into
our world with the use of all of social digital electronics. Cyberbullying also referred to as
Cybercrime, has become a tool that is used by youth to devalue the lives of other youth without
having to pay the price of a face to face confrontation. It is a detrimental drain on our society that
dehumanizes the victim to a point of suicide in some cases. In this paper I will explain what
Cyberbullying is and how it affects our youth through the use of social digital electronics; as well
as what can be done to best handle the negative side effects of the use of this communications.
Cyberbullying can be defined in many ways, though most definitions share
commonalities. According to Eric J. Fritsch and Daniel M. Stewart in the article “School and
Law Enforcement Efforts to Combat Cyberbullying”
For example, Belsey (as cited in Li, 2005, p. 1179) maintained that “cyberbullying
involves the use of information and communication technologies . . . to support deliberate,
repeated, and hostile behavior by an individual or group, Crime Prevention
Council (n.d) maintained the Cyberbullying is “when the Internet, cell phones or other devices
are used to send or post text or images intended to hurt or embarrass another person. (Fritsch)
By using this definition we can see the social digital electronics communication is being
used to perpetrate the strong hand of certain individuals. This is very similar to the bullying

pulpit used by the President of the United States, when he wants to push his politics through
Congress. Cybercrime is the use of social digital electronic device to inflict emotional harm to
the intending victim in order to control what they do or how they feel.
Cyberbullying happens in a non-physical world but has real world consequences. The
thought is placed in a social media electronic device is used to send bullying messages to the
victim’s social media electronic device with very little thought of how this can affect the victim
or themselves in the future. As many parents tell their children that all electronic messages are
recorded and will be used in the future to tell a positive story about a negative story concerning a
victim. The need to control this nonphysical arena is becoming a very real world problem. So
any negative comments made on the internet may someday comeback to detrimental to one’s
future endeavors.
Schools are having a difficult time dealing with the fallout from students being cyberbullied.
According to Amanda McHenry in the article “Combating Cyberbullying Within
The Metes and Bounds of Existing Supreme Court Precedent:”
Even though Cyberbullying has harmful, and sometimes deadly, consequences, even
bullies have constitutional rights. Internet speech may be entitled to First Amendment
protection. Schools must, therefore, have the constitutional authority to regulate this expression
if they wish to address the Cyberbullying problem. (McHenry)
In this passage, McHenry states that the schools have to walk a fine line between the free speech
rights of a student and the Civil Liberties of another student. The school is very aware that there
is no clear legal precedent that govern the Cyber Space. The schools cannot discipline children
for free expression and speech. This is due to the landmark case of Tinker vs. Des Moines
Independent Community School District (1969), but this does not allow a student to clearly use

their free speech to harass someone with electric digital device and then hide in the shadows.
With these electronic digital devices, someone needs to be victimized in order for a crime to be
committed. One cannot commit a crime without having someone in which to perpetrate the
crime upon. Cyberbullying intimidates a victim into not coming forward and see how they have
been brutalized emotionally because of the predators wounding electronic words. School can
intercede the message if it disrupts learning and infringes on the victim’s civil rights.
Law enforcement is also having difficulty in dealing with cyberbullies and how they can
use the legal laws on the books to prove legal parameters. Compounding law enforcement
efforts is the fact most police forces are understaffed and lack the resources to handle the
cumbersome task of handling the crime that is not clearly defined. Along with the
fact, victims are ashamed to come forward to speak to the law enforcement about their predator,
thus making it very hard to prosecute the cyberbully. The Federal Government is writing a few
laws to combat cybercrime, as the government does have the resources to affect a positive
change in laws. The Federal Government sees Cyberbullying as a local issue, not one to be
addressed by them. Law enforcement is using the laws on the book and writing new laws in
order to combat this fairly new crime of Cyberbullying and provide protection for its citizens.
Education is the best way of combating this crime and its detrimental effect that are infiltrating
the younger generation. According to Robert A. Gable, John Snakenborg and Richard Van Acker
in the article “School and Law Enforcement efforts to combat Cyberbullying:”
According to a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, an estimated 90%
of youth aged 12 to 17 years are active on the Internet on a daily basis and more than
50% of the youth aged 12 to 17 years have personal cell phones (Rainie, 2005). (Gable)

Cyberbullying happens in an area and uses a median in which adults are not present in. By
realizing adults being around is the number one thing that can be changed to having positive
outcomes occur. By giving the children wisdom that adult’s have, will give the child the
knowledge to deal with this crime. As adults we need to understand that this form of electronic
communication is taking place and our children have to deal with this on an ongoing basis. The
adults need to realize their children are being bombarded with messages from social electronic
devices every day and all day long, the adults should realize that some of these messages will be
negative and cause their children to be threatened and personally attacked in these messages. As
parents we need to teach our children that they can speak to us about these attacks as they
experience them. Eliminating these attacks is not an option with our current laws, so it is
important that parents talk to their kids about ways to handle the bully.
Schools need to take a proactive stance and set the policy of no Cyberbullying.
According to Victor Sbarbaro and Theresa M. Enyeart Smith in the Study “An Exploratory Study
of Bullying and Cyberbullying Behaviors Among Economically/Educationally Disadvantaged
Middle School Students:”
Another important factor to take into account is the school climate. This has the
potential to greatly influence bullying by vastly increasing or decreasing it.
School climate refers to the any different facets of a school including
connectedness to school, teacher stance on bullying and empathy. (Sbarbaro)
By doing this, the school creates an environment in which students can bring forth this type of
behavior to the attention of the teachers. Teachers can make statements in effect to this type of
behavior will be punished and the administration and School Board will support the teachers and
students. If the school provides classes on how Students Can Deal With Cyberbullying in A

Proactive Way and How to Talk About It. When schools provide this kind of training for the
students, the students are equipped with the appropriate skills.
This generation of children are more wired to the internet thus, becoming more prone to
Cyberbullying. Denise B. Accordino and Michael P. Accordino in the study “An Exploratory
Study of Face-to-Face And Cyberbullying in Sixth Grade Students:”
The finding that the amounts of time students spend in chat rooms/social
networking Contributed to Cyberbullying supports the results found by Dehue et
al. (2008), Hinduja And Patchin (2008), and Ybarra and Mitchell (2004a). Their
research indicated that Cyberbullying is more prevalent when using the internet
for extended periods of time. Based on these results, it would seem prudent to
focus on parents setting limits with Regard to online activities and electronic
media (e.g. cell phone texting). (Accordino)
The amount time being spent on digital media devices, children are more likely to
be victimized. Limiting the time spent on the social digital devices will assist in control of
preventing being victimized. It is up to parents to be the adult and provided guidelines for their
children and control the amount of time on the internet.
We can help the children by using these three methods to lower the risk of negative
outcomes of being cyberbullied. First, limit the time that you children spend on digital
devices, reduces the time spent on line thus reducing chances of being victimized. Second,
educated your children about what can be done to defend themselves when they are attacked.
Third, as a society we need to have the legislative branch pass more concise bills to become
laws in order to prosecute the cyberbully’s that are in the digital airwaves. Society is more in
control of the digital world than originally thought; society needs to deploy the resources it has

access to reduce the cyberbully attacks until laws are put into place.