Cyber bully

Amanda Todd,

Tyler Clementi,

Ryan Halligan,

Megan Meier, J

Amey Rodemeyer...

...are only some of the names that made it to mainstream media. These are all kids, mostly under the age of 15 and what they all have in common is that, their suicide is attributed to cyber bullying. So we have a problem and we need to talk about it. We have spend most of this course talking about the benefits of Social Media as we should do so. However, how do we deal with the dark side of Social Media. There is no doubt that the technology is rapidly growing, the benefits are limitless and there is no going back. Bullying is a real problem and always has been. It is more common in teenager because they are still looking for a place for themselves. They are just wanting to fit in and be liked. When things go wrong and one is subjected to bullying, the social media becomes a very powerful tool to hurt that person even more. However, I still think that we should not yet the hit the panic button. There are now over 1 Billion Users Of Social Media Worldwide, mostly on mobile. Teenagers of today in most modern societies now own a smart phone and access social media on the go. Yet we have a small number of suicides that we can link with cyber-bullying. Please don't think that I, in any way undermine the importance or sadness of the issue but I just think that we should put things in perspective. Bullying persists in Social media platform or everyday life and this is what we should be dealing with. Maybe even use Social Media as a tool to target bullies because they leave a trail of evidence behind themselves when using the internet. Most importantly let's talk about it at schools and educate children. Make them realize that there are ways to deal with it and there is support out there for who may need.

We need to better legislation and we need better awareness! We need teachers, parents and students to work together for a solution. We need support groups for victims. We just need to get creative at protecting young people and most importantly teaching them to protect themselves. On top of that it helps that Cyber bullying is making its way into law books and the incidents are treated with great seriousness by the police. 

What a real subject to finish the course with! Thanks to all who has followed my posts over the last few months.It has been great pleasure to be a part of this online group despite all the personal difficulties that came my way. Best of luck to all of you....

Seda