How Does Cyberbullying Impact Our Mental Health?
In our lives today, social media helps us communicate more quickly and easily with family, friends, and acquaintances, as well as share experiences and let others know our opinions. It can also be widely used by bad people when they use them to threaten, bully and even mentally abuse people through electronics. It can be simply understood as cyberbullying. People can encounter cyberbullying in many forms such as, harassment, spreading rumors, trickery, etc. (Peebles, 2014) towards others through social media like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Email. These actions not only affect the victim's psychology and spirit, but also contribute to creating a toxic and unsafe online environment. Even cyberbullying is an online action, but it still affects people in real life since it causes people to be scared, and worried because they can drive people crazy with many forms of bullying on social media.
Basically, cyberbullying refers to the use of social media platforms for communicating false, embarrassing, and hostile information of specific users as Prajapati has said below section no.4 of cyberbully. Therefore, cyberbullying has become very common among teenagers. According to (Monica Anderson, 2018) a survey, nearly 59% of U.S. teenagers have experienced online bullying and harassment. The act of cyberbullying consists of spreading rumors and lies, posting private photos/video and information of others without any consent. One big thing that makes cyberbullying more harmful is that it's an anonymous way to hurt others. They use fake identities to humiliate and threaten others, which helps protect their real identities and motivates them to continue bullying others.
Cyberbullying is a common problem that has a negative impact on people's mental health in today's society. A series of online actions intended to hurt, harass, or frighten another could lead to traumatization. According to Nixon, adolescents who are cyberbullied experience fear, depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-harm, etc. Additionally, people who gets bully may lose interest in spending time with loved ones around and most danger case is commit suicide. Because the internet is now everywhere in the world, cyberbullying can happen anywhere and it brings a feeling of insecurity, hence, the victims of cyberbullying often feel uncomfortable and easily think nonsense leading to depression.
In the "Cyberbullying on Social Media: an Analysis of Teachers' Unheard Voices and Coping Strategies in Nepal." also states that highlights the harmful effects of cyberbullying on adolescents' mental health and focuses specifically on the impact of social media. The interview and internet data were analyzed to learn more about the causes and effects of cyberbullying. The results of this study support the idea that cyberbullying can have devastating psychological consequences for young victims of cyberbullying. Teens who experience online harassment frequently report feeling overwhelmed by emotions such as anxiety, insecurity, hopelessness, and low self-esteem. Cyberbullying refers to the use of electronic technology to harass, threaten another person, most commonly through social media.
Their mental health can also be damaged by constant worries about being victimized and having their privacy violated on social media. When it comes to cyberbullying, social media sites are an important enabler. Due to the anonymity and accessibility of the platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, etc. that offenders may be mistaken thinking their act doesn't cause any guilt. The terrifying psychological effects of cyberbullying become even more serious as false information, inappropriate material, and humiliation are spread everywhere on social networks. Due to the current life of social media, offensive material has the potential to spread quickly, leaving victims devastated.
As technology is growing social media has become an imperative part of our society. Social media has proved to have both positive and negative impact on youth. However, social networking sites have a negative effect on teens' mental health as frequent use of these sites causes mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, and sleep deprivation. Although social media has enhanced our connectivity, it is also causing a decline in social and communication skills. Due to excess use of social networking sites the quality of relationships has dramatically declined. Further, cyberbullying has also emerged as a negative effect on social media which has increased rapidly in the past few years causing mental distress among teens. Therefore, the effects of cyberbullying on a person's mental health are very serious and should never be ignored.
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