CYBER BULLYING

Cyber Bullying as a Violation of Personal Rights

Cyber Bullying as a Violation of Personal Rights

Introduction

Cyber bullying can be defined as act of using internet and related technologies to deliberately and repeatedly cause harm to people, in a hostile manner. The phenomenon has recently emerged to spotlight when news of numerous people especially those in their youth are reportedly being victimized which has resulted in emergence of legislative measures and awareness campaigns aimed at combating the social evil. There are many acts that come under the umbrella term of cyber bullying. Examples of cyber bullying include use of information and communication technologies to seek to humiliate, intimidate, falsely discredit or control a person. The nature of action is more often repeated and deliberate, and it results in inflicting physical or mental harm to the person being bullied (Bale, 2012).

The acts of cyber-bullying are not, as misunderstood widely, limited to the children, but it may be experienced by adults as well. But majority of serious crimes that have caused or motivated by the acts of cyber-bullying involved teenage males and female students. One such case of cyber bullying in recent time is that of Amanda Todd, who has committed suicide after being bullied for several months by a person still unfound by the law enforcement agencies (Hattrup, 2008).

The Case of Amanda Todd

Amanda Todd, a 15 year old student of school from Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada was found dead in her home on October 10, 2012. The local police have ascertained that the death of teen was the result of suicide (Gastaldo, 2012). A month before his suicide, Todd posted a nine-minute video on a popular video publishing website Youtube, explaining the immense mental pain she had been going through. In the said video, Todd, using a series of handwritten flash cards, told her extremely painful experience of being bullied, blackmailed and assaulted (Gastaldo, 2012).

The video received thousands of visits each day after the death of Amanda Todd and soon has resulted in catching the attention of international media. Immediately after the tragic incident, Royal Canadian Mounted Police and British Columbia Coroners Service has started investigated into the matter, and later confirmed that Amanda Todd has hung herself to death. Although the police investigations have revealed nothing more than the deceased herself did in her Youtube video in which she told she first came into contact with the alleged bully when she was the student of grade seven (Gastaldo, 2012). The bully somehow managed to have the topless image of Todd, which he later posted on the internet, ultimately causing the teenage girl to commit suicide.

Recommendations

Following are the recommended step for framing academic policies around the issue of cyber bullying in eLearning environments.

First of all, a large scale awareness campaign should be started at the national level in order educate people especially children that are studying in schools or are the part of e-Learning environment about the concept of cyber bullying and how it can affect people ...