Anti-Bullying

Anti-Bullying

Introduction and background

Bullying is the act of using abusive language written or verbal or instead aggressively dominate and use of force intended to hurt another individual or colleague. Bullying is often a repeated behavior or habit. Bullying behavior may be direct that is face-to-face confrontation such as kicking, damaging one’s property, and other forms of physical harm. It may also be emotional, whereby one intentionally uses strong words to inflict or discomfort another person’s feelings. Bullying is based on the following aspects;physical, social, and even economic power. Bullying is differing from conflict on the bases of the above- named elements. Bullying comprises individual intimidation and group bullying. Group bullying is also called mobbing, which involves the bully having some followers who are more than willing to help the bully accomplish their harassing activities.

Bullying is commonly found in schools and workplaces. In the school context, it is the most common type of violence among the students, and it is considered as a grave concern globally.It involves new students being mistreated by other students of higher forms and grades, and the newcomers are made to do chores assigned to their ‘masters’ for example, cleaning and washing garments for the bullies. Workplace bullying is a constant or persistent mistreat of workers from their colleagues in the workplace. It may cause either emotional discomfort or physical injuries and harm. Workplace bullying may be verbal, psychological, and humiliation. Workplace bullying is often done by workers that have authority over other victims. According to Carter (2013), workplace bullying by superiors may lead to a reduction of employee’s morale and a change in institutional culture, which leads to criticism and a lack of promotions..

Social media bullying

Bullying in social media may include both the physical and cyber worlds (cyber Bullying), which is a serious national health issue among youths. Our primary concern is social media bullying, which is due to the use of language processing techniques. Cyber Bullying is receiving more attention due to increased social media usage.

Impact of Bullying on kids

According to Huang, Singh, and Atrey (2014), Bullying may have both negative short term and adverse long-term effects on kids (for both the bully and the victim).Cyber Bullying may lead to many vital and adverse impacts on an individual’s life and lead to youth’s suicide. Quaden Bayles, a nine-year-old boy, who is an Australian faces social media bullying due to his dwarfism. Some traditional intervention on Bullying may include helping the victim and punishing the bully accordingly. They also set or establish several consequences against Bullying. The victims may suffer from short term risks of Bullying in such a way that the victims, especially kids, are different and are likely to show some different behaviors when it comes to Bullying, either during or after the Bullying by the peers.  Bullying can continue between kids for an extended period before kids seekassistance due to the rise in cyber Bullying. High levels of Bullying are associated with low performances for the victim, social isolation, low self-esteem, feeling of shame, and school avoidances. Short term effects of Bullying on the bully may include; poor school performances (missing a lot of classes due to suspensions), increased risks of substance abuse, and difficulties in maintaining social relations.

Lack of intervention for kids who are being bullied may lead to long term risks of Bullying, which includes; increased thoughts of suicidal thoughts,Quaden reaches the point of wanting to commit suicide, “Give me a knife, I want to kill myself,” says Quaden. Other long-term adverse effects of bullying on the victims are; depression, poor health issues, substance use, and challenges in establishing trust and relationships. Long term effects of Bullying for the bully include; substance abuse, risk of anti-social behavior, and the likelihood of unemployment when they reach working age. Childhood bullying has severe impacts on both the long-term and short-term well-being of a child.  It is crucial for all the parties involved, that is, the schools, the families, the communities, and the social media to work hand in hand so that they can reduce and eradicate Bullying by understanding it and its later consequences.

Celebrities in support of Anti-bullying

According to posts on twitter #QuadenBayles, Cardi B is in the first line to fight against Bullying in social media. She comes out and defends Quaden against age conspiracy, and this is after online trolls accused Quaden of secretly being an adult because of his dwarfism, yet he is only nine years old. Cardi B says that just because Quaden acts all gangster and relaxed in everything does not make him an adultthe video his mother, Yarraka, shared on Facebook of him trying to commit suicide, created awareness of the consequences of social media bullying. The rumor spreads through the internet that Quaden is eighteen years old actor just because he was standing in front of a large “18” sign, which was in a friend’s house. He had attended the birthday party of the family friend who had turned eighteen years old. Hugh Jackman also shared a video on Twitter to try and comfort Quaden and told him that he will always be his friend. Other comedians like Brad Williams, started a GoFundMe page to help raise money to send Quaden and his family to Disney land. Brad Williams appreciates the love shown by Quaden and promises him that the funds raised will not be wasted. Brad Williams set a target of ten thousand dollars, but to his amazement, the contributions accumulate to four hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars. Although the family never asked for the money, Brad Williams is determined to hit his target of the donation simply to try and make Quaden and his family feel loved. Quaden’s family donate the GoFundMe contributions to the charities and the needy. Quaden get invited to attend a rugby game over the weekend and was caught on one of the videos leading the rugby team out into the field in their rugby league clash with the Maori All-Stars in Queensland. Quaden also offered a chance to train one of the top MMA fighters in Singapore. The fighter had promised to make Quaden bully-proof.

Quaden receives different social media responses and reactions, especially on Twitter; the opinions are both positive and negative responses. Some people go to the extent of making memes to discredit and insult Quaden. Although Brad Williams thought he was helping Quaden by setting up a GoFundMe page, it is not a good reaction since the family never asked for financial support or any other kind of support. Instead of spending the money, Quaden’s family goes ahead and donate the funds needily. Most people on twitter seem to understand the disabilities that Quaden has and try to share their positive comments and how they feel about the things and challenges Quaden appears to go through. A middle-Aged woman shared a positive tweet discouraging the conspiracy of Quaden’s age. She says that it is disgusting for people to think that a nine-year-old boy is actually eighteen-year-old and that people are quickly drawn to believe in negativity rather than positivity. The woman tries to imagine the feeling of being bullied by a large group of people on social media. Another twitter user, Zaid Suhail, sends a positive tweet trying to comfort Quaden and his family. Zaid says that no matter what Quaden and his family go through, they will emerge victoriously. Ziad tries to urge people to love one another and stand against Bullying based on skin color, race, and creed.

conclusion

Milosevic (2016) explains that social media bullying (cyberbullying) is becoming a sensitive issue in our society for all the parties involved. Kids spend most of their time online on the sites where they are like to face online Bullying. Cyberbullying is similar to other types of Bullying, for example, traditional Bullying, which stops when one finishes his or her studies. Cyberbullying, unlike traditional Bullying, has no escape. Kids are harassed and tormented by their peers or by adults on social media via smartphones and computers. The most common ways of preventing cyberbullying is talking to a psychologist or opening up to their parents. Kids and students should create a rapport with their parents and have an open conversation to discuss the acts of Bullying. This way, the parent or the guardian will be able to see the involvement of his or her kid in bullying situations. Another way of controlling Bullying is the use of celebrities. One chooses a role model and follows them in many ways. Nowadays, many celebrities have come up to support cyberbullying victims. In our case, we see how celebs like Cardi B and Hugh Jackman come for the aid of Quaden against the bullies on Twitter. Engaging parents and youths in creating a society for adults and kids to send a message against cyberbullying. Parents, kids, and the community should try and use all the ways possible to reduce and eradicate bullying.

References

Carter, M. A. (2013). Third-party observers witnessing cyber Bullying on social media sites. Procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 84, 1296-1309.

Huang, Q., Singh, V. K., & Atrey, P. K. (2014, November). Cyberbullying detection using social and textual analysis. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Socially-Aware Multimedia (pp. 3-6).

Milosevic, T. (2016). Social media companies’ cyberbullying policies. International Journal of Communication, 10, 22.

Xu, J. M., Zhu, X., & Bellmore, A. (2012, August). Fast learning for sentiment analysis on Bullying. In Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Issues of Sentiment Discovery and Opinion Mining (pp. 1-6).