Social media is intended to help people keep in touch with friends and family. People can post relevant pictures of activities, or anything else they want to share. Recently, sites such as Facebook and Twitter are also being used for arguing and fighting.
Facebook and Twitter are the top two social media sites. Facebook has around 750,000,000 members and Twitter has about 250,000,000.
In grade school, there are social groups or ‘cliques’. Being in these groups separates members from the other students. This may cause friction between social groups, which may lead to conflict.
Unfortunately social media gives students and young adults the chance to voice their opinion, without directing it towards one individual, which gives them the chance to be much meaner online than in person.
Posting a status or a tweet about someone, without actually mentioning their name causes people to infer who you are talking about.
Students have much more courage behind a computer screen, than they do face to face, with the person who they are having issues with. Posting something online seems much easier than actually resolving the problem, in person.
Some school-provided assemblies discuss social media disputes and how to correctly handle them. Fighting online is also referred to as ‘cyber bullying’ and it is a serious issue with serious consequences, even pushing some students to attempt suicide.
Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people, resulting in about 4,400 deaths per year. For every one suicide, there are at least 100 suicide attempts. Over 14 percent of high school students have considered suicide and almost 7 percent have attempted it.
The arguments that happen online are more common among girls than among boys.
Some girls in middle and high school find online fighting funny and enjoyable. Many of them feel that degrading someone is a fun thing to do and find humor in it.
In reality, the victim of the fight or whoever “loses” the online fight is the one who is hurt the most. Friends of the victim usually see the fights online and they don’t say anything about it. It’s like the next day, it never even happened and everyone forgets about it.
Everyone forgets, but the person who was hurt the most. Friends and family need to learn that when they see fights/ bullying happening online that they must do something about it.
Also, victims of the fights need to learn how to stand up for themselves, knowing that everything that the predator is saying to you is false. Not listening to them is the best thing to do.
Don’t go unheard, report it. Most victims are scared to report it, thinking that the online attacker might attack them again.
If you’re a victim of online fighting, cyber bullying, or bullying in general, then you need to talk to a parent, counselor, or anyone who can help you.
There are a wide variety of assembly’s that can be provided, to help teens dealing with cyber-bullying and other forms of bullying. Students and other victims need to report instances and stand up for themselves.
