Cyber
Harassment And Teen Suicide
How Online
Bullying And Cyber Harassment Are Killing Teens
No
one can deny the devastating effects that cyber
harassment can have on kids and teens. For many
years society paid little attention to the problem of cyber
harassment believing it to be just a phase that all
teens go through. Some thought the effects were
just an extension of the usual teen arguments that commonly
occur in-person or on the phone. They viewed this new
brand of online bullying as the natural progression
of teen disagreements from the real physical world to the world
of the Internet. This
could not be further from the truth.
As it stands today, online bullying has grown in epic proportion
and some government documentation has shown that upwards of
43 percent of teens have been a victim or have participated
in it or know somebody how has.
What are
the worst effects of cyber harassment?
The answer
has now become brutally clear. The most devastating
and shocking effect of online bullying is teen suicide.
It's becoming all too common these days to hear about another
teen suicide caused by extreme
cyber harassment. And it doesn't just happen
in the United States. The problem is everywhere Internet access
is available, so these kinds of teen suicides are
being reported worldwide.
Many
parents all over the world are now convinced
that their teenager’s suicide was a direct reaction
to some message or communication that they got from the Internet.
How does
cyber harassment cause teen suicide?
Research
has shown that many teens feel victimized and isolated
from everyone else, including their own parents. Feelings
of isolation is one of the effects of cyber harassment
of teens, and it can
quickly escalate into a state of deep depression with feelings
of complete hopelessness.
These teens feel that their parents are completely incapable
of doing anything to stop the victimization. They think their
parents are not taking the situation seriously. They feel
that their parents will only brush off the problem as something
that will pass.
Even parents
who are actively involved in their children’s lives
sometimes leave themselves powerless
to circumvent these inevitable attacks. There
was a recent case in Australia where a young girl reported
to her mother that she just received a message on the Internet
that made her want to die. The mother
took her daughter seriously. She had a one-hour heart-to-heart
discussion with her teen. The mother thought the daughter
was happy after the talk, as she really appeared to be. However,
the
daughter went through with the suicide
later that night.
As teens,
friends, family, school personnel and community leaders, we
must never take cyber harassment lightly. Teen suicide
not only robs the future of the youth in question, it affects
the lives of the parents and siblings, extended family, and
circle of friends. Cyber harassment
and teen suicide are not simply a family issue,
it is a community issue, it is a state issue, and it is country
issue.
For
information on how to prevent cyber harassment,
click here
now.
Joe Medeiros
|
