Dealing with Cyberbullying

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Cyberbullying is bullying that uses technology such as the internet or mobile phones. Cyberbullying does not necessarily take place on school grounds, but harmful effects are experienced by victims of cyber bullying in schools. There a number of technological tools that cyber bullies use such as internet, email, social networking sites, and mobile phones. There are also a number of prevention strategies that school counselors, school personnel, students, and parents can adopt to help prevent cyber bullying.

Bullying is an aggressive behavior that involves repeated unwanted negative actions toward an individual by one or more individuals and involves an imbalance of power or strength. Cyber bullying is a type of bullying that uses technology in order to cause harm to another individual (Agatston, n.d.). Cyber bullying has been defined as ‘the use of information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior by an individual or group that is intended to harm others’. Cyber bullying involves sending or posting harmful or cruel text or images using the internet or other digital communication devices (Bhat, 2008).

Cyber bullying can take on many forms like flaming, harassment, denigration, impersonation, outing, trickery, exclusion, or cyberstalking. Flaming is online fights using electronic messages with angry and vulgar language and harassment is when a person sends nasty, mean, and insulting messages repeatedly. Denigration is when a person disses someone else online and sending or posting gossips or rumors about an individual to damage his or her reputation or friendships. Impersonation is when someone pretends to be someone else and sends or posts material to get that person in trouble, ge...

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Lenhart, A. (2010, May 6). Cyberbullying 2010: what the research tells us. Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved March 1, 2011, from http://pewinternet.org/Presentations/2010/May/Cyberbullying-2010.aspx

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