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Cyber Bullying: For Instant Idiot, Just Add Facebook
One of the biggest things to come out of the rise of social network sites is the amount of abuse focused at individuals or groups on a daily basis. Although sites to seem to take a firm hand when it comes to racism, homophobia etc, there doesn't seem to be much that you can do about targeted cyber bullying. With so many people hiding behind their computers it is easy for things to escalate and go that step too far, even between two people who have never met in real life.
It is easy to create a completely different persona when using social network sites, the quiet guy at work can often become a hate breathing ball of aggression on Facebook and the friend that always seemed so nice could be the one sending you abusive emails and threats. Stuff masks and balaclavas, for a real disguise just create a fake profile and the world is your cyber oyster.
One of the strangest aspects of cyber bullying is that people often create their own image of the person that they are attacking. Chinese whispers via sites such as Facebook can lead to people being labelled as something that they are not; if you get enough people ganging up on one target then this becomes even easier. Just like a fight in a bar or a club manages to involve more than just the actual people involved, the same goes for cyber bullying. Often people jump on a bandwagon if they see someone getting ‘hammered’ by others even if they have never met them before in real life. Obviously it works the other way round; one person creating a fake profile to hide behind can cause just as much chaos as a large group.
Spotting the people that are out to stir things up on Facebook is easy. Look for the profiles with no real pictures or the overt sexual or aggressive comments. These are the ones that hide behind a username and password to try and get a reaction out of others; there are plenty of them out there! Almost all sites have a way of reporting abusive behaviour and fake profiles so why go through the hassle of getting worked up over an idiot with a laptop trying to cause a scene? For more information on cyber bullying and the many forms that it takes visit http://yp.direct.gov.uk/cyberbullying/.