The internet is a beautiful place, with many opportunities available for all kinds of people. In mere seconds, a person can access any information she desires. Technology offers countless data, all at one’s fingertips, ready to be accessed whenever and wherever. Social media allows for interaction never before possible, and many people have formed friendships with others from entirely different walks of life, even on opposite sides of the world! Surely there’s nothing bad that could ever come of this, right?

If you ignore the rampant online bullying, that is.

No matter how minor or extensive, whether it’s first or secondhand, nearly everyone has experienced some sort of cyberbullying. It’s an ever-increasing issue and can even be considered a crisis.

Talking about cyberbullying seems easy enough—on the surface, at least. Maybe if we just explain that it hurts people, the problem will go away! Except that hardly does anything to fix the problem. All we do is put a bandaid on it; the issue is still there.

In reality, cyberbullying is a much more complex topic than just simply saying some mean things online. It encompasses much more, including but not limited to:

• exclusion from online activities (such as making group chats without people, phone calls where one person is explicitly left out, etc)
• personal harassment (cruel comments online, hateful text messages and phone calls, etc)
• harassment done behind a person’s back (spreading rumors, filming and posting someone without her consent, etc)
• and many, many other things.

So if cyberbullying has multiple different forms, how do we recognize it in ourselves and in others?  To answer this, a poll was sent out to the Saint Scholastica Academy student body, with questions as follows:

• Have you ever been the victim of cyberbullying?
• Has anyone you’ve ever known been the victim of cyberbullying?
• Have you ever offended someone online?
• Do you think cyberbullying is a problem at SSA?
• As well as an open place for students to share their personal experiences with cyberbullying.

136 students responded with very mixed answers. Pie charts of the first four questions are indicated below:

Gallery • 4 Photos

Pie chart of the responses to the question: "Have you ever been the victim of cyberbullying?" The percentages are: 22.8% for "Yes" (31 people) and 77.2% for "No" (105 people).

As you see, responses varied. While a majority of the students listed that they had never partaken in or been cyberbullied, and did not believe it an issue at SSA, the majority claimed they had, at the very least, known someone who had been or was currently being cyberbullied. There is also the case of the free response, which was much more enlightening.

There’s a lot of misconceptions of what exactly quantifies cyberbullying, as well as of the gravity of cyberbullying as a whole. This small survey offered a glimpse into the general public’s opinion on cyberbullying. It isn’t “that bad,” and even when it is, the person being bullied should just “grow up.”

Furthermore, many get defensive when the discussion of cyberbullying comes up, because it can cause us to start to wonder if maybe we too could be responsible. We don’t like to think we are capable of harm; no one does. There’s a fine line to walk when we talk about cyberbullying; addressing the issue without feeling like we have to justify ourselves—even if we haven’t actually done anything wrong—is very hard, but we also shouldn’t hide or discredit the lived experiences of people who have dealt with cyberbullying. We also have to ask ourselves what level of responsibility we might actually have. Even if we ourselves are not cyberbullying someone, if we are aware that a friend or companion is and we do nothing, are we not equally complicit in the misdeed?

Overall, while the responses received by SSA students may lead a person to believe it isn’t an issue, what matters more is the people speaking on their real-life experiences with cyberbullying. The numbers say that more people claim to not view cyberbullying as an issue than those who do, but this is also directly contrasted by the fact that, out of the 137 who answered the poll, 69 stated  they knew someone who had experienced cyberbullying. Furthermore, the fact that anyone at all is experiencing it is an issue. Dealing with cyberbullying isn’t just about making sure we as individuals don’t experience cyberbullying, it’s about making sure no one does. Humanity exists as a social species; if we only focused on making our own lives better, and left little regard for how our actions may affect other people, everyone would be miserable. No one is immune to hatred or harassment; we delude ourselves into thinking we are, but public favor is constantly changing, and it is just as easy to fall out of it as it is to rise into it. The online Armageddon is not an event in the distant future; it started the very moment the internet was born.

Judgment is cyberbullying’s greatest ally, and kindness its most dangerous adversary. Judgment crafts an existence where no one feels truly safe to be oneself, even in an online setting where honesty is, at all times, demanded. Judgment allows harassment and hatred to thrive. When a person is judged and deemed “unworthy,” it suddenly becomes alright to bully her. This can even bleed into a moral superiority complex where we believe each other to have done something “wrong,” whether or not we actually did.

Bullying kills. It’s not a pretty truth, and not one that anybody likes to think about, but it needs to be addressed. Not watered down or sanitized, but stated bluntly. For instance, study conducted by Iris Wagman Borowsky, Lindsay A Taliaferro, and Barbara J McMorris at the Department of Pediatrics with the University of Minnesota in 2013 determined that “Suicidal thinking or a suicide attempt was reported by 22% of perpetrators only, 29% of victims only, and 38% of bully-victims.” Those percentages may not seem like all that much, but consider it this way:

There are 586 students at Saint Scholastica Academy. Just twenty-two percent of 586 is approximately 129 people. Take a look around at your class when you have the chance. How many students are there? How many could have been affected by bullying to such a great extent to consider suicide? The next time everyone is in the gym for an assembly, imagine what it would look like if 129 of the 586 students were no longer there, and never would be again. 223?

If you are one of these people, you are not alone. Things may seem that way right now, but there are numerous support sources out there. At SSA, counselors are readily available for any students in need of immediate help, and all of the teachers and administration will also be available to offer help in crisis situations. If you’re experiencing suicidal thoughts, you should tell a trusted adult, from SSA or otherwise. And even if you don’t feel secure going to an adult, there are several different resources you can pursue. You can call or text the National Suicide Lifeline at 988, depending on which feels comfortable for you. You can also visit the website here, which offers online chatting and other additional resources: https://988lifeline.org/get-help/. Telling someone you’re experiencing suicidal thoughts can be scary, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it. It is never too late to get help. You don’t have to wait until things are “bad enough” before telling someone. There is no “bad enough” when it comes to suicidal thoughts. Whether or not it’s active (such as having an active plan or actively wishing to die) or passive (not seeing the value in your life or simply not caring whether you live or die), suicidal idelation is not something to be ashamed of or kept hidden. Things will get better, even if that seems impossible right now. Every single one of you is worthy, and deserves to be alive, no matter what anyone may tell you.

Of course, this means very little without considering the actual accounts of people at SSA discussing their experiences with cyberbullying. Out of respect for the privacy of the students who responded to the survey, no direct quotes will be given, but instead a summary of the key points.

The primary theme of several of the responses given related to how easy the Internet makes it to spread rumors around. The accessibility of it, as well as the way that nothing on the internet truth disappears forever, makes rumors become widespread much, much quicker, and also makes them extremely difficult to dispel once they’ve been shared. Several girls stated that cyberbullying primarily occurred on Instagram and Snapchat stories, both of which allow users to limit who can see posts made, which makes it easier to keep the rumors-spreading hidden, at least from the person they’re being spread about. Furthermore, while the permanence of social media is a factor in how hard it is to dispel cyberbullying, so is the quick disappearance from stories on multiple sites. Both Instagram and Snapchat have features that cause stories to “disappear” after twenty-four hours, and while these things may not truly be gone, it also makes it much harder to catch the perpetrators unless someone manages to get a screenshot of the original post. And, most importantly, the biggest factor behind the cyberbullying that occurs is the judgmental atmosphere which seems to be pervasive throughout social media as a whole.

This last part is especially significant in regards to the same topic of judgment mentioned earlier. There’s this environment on social media that has grown more and more common, a concept of “cringe,” where genuine self-expression is beaten down and harassed by others, until it is hidden away, never to be seen again. It bleeds into real life, and it can make it impossible for us to feel like we can be ourselves. When we project shame onto each other so intensely, when our only crime is having fun and being ourselves, that becomes a problem.

So why do people cyberbully? What makes it so easy? Simply put, it’s the lack of genuine human connection. When connecting on screens, it can be so easy to see the person on it as simply a “character,” a “facade.” And while this might be true in some cases, in many it is not. And more than that, even if every person on the internet did wear such a mask, cyberbullying is so immensely personal that the mask does very little to protect from the hurt. Still, the ease in which people can fall into habits of cyberbullying—whether as a result of forgotten humanity, peer pressure, how sometimes making others look and feel bad can make us look or feel better, or any assortment of factors have all combined to make cyberbullying more common than ever. A possible factor in this could be related to the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. The lockdown had many of us seeking comfort on the internet, and yet, we could only communicate online, causing distance between people to form much faster. We were no longer associating friends, family, and companions with faces, but instead with digital images and text. If we can’t see the person we’re hurting, is it even real? Besides, everyone else does it, too, so what’s the harm in joining?

As previously established, simply saying that cyberbullying is bad does very little to properly address the problem, and waiting to help until after someone has been affected is the same as trying to mow away weeds, instead of removing them at the roots. So, what can be done to combat it? 

In all honesty, there really is no one clear way to end cyberbullying. Support systems should be put in place for the people already being hurt, and this would likely help to some extent. It already is. But the only way to stop cyberbullying is to stop those doing it. That’s much easier said than done. The easier way to slow cyberbullying, if not outright stop it, is to become aware of our own presence online, and work towards shifting the internet as a whole into a more positive place. This can be done by complimenting people online, blocking any hatred or negativity we see, not engaging in toxic discourse, and holding ourselves as well as friends and family accountable for actions online.

Many people tend to view cyberbullying as an issue only faced by big-name celebrities and anyone who gains some sort of infamy online. This goes hand-in-hand with a mentality that blames these people for experiencing this digital vitriol and also erases the perfectly ordinary people who deal with this situation in real life. The truth is this: no one deserves to be harassed online. When we delude ourselves with the idea of perfection—a standard that no one, not even those considered by the masses to be the best or most average, can achieve—and entitlement to everyone else’s lives, to the most “raw” version of the self, everyone gets hurt. No one escapes unscathed. It is our responsibility to spread positivity and kindness in the new digital age. We cannot determine anyone’s actions except our own, but we must accept the gravity of the things we do and the ways we can hurt others.

Ask yourself: what kind of world do you want to live in?

I want to live in a world where it isn’t so “easy” to hurt other people, a world where people don’t have to feel ashamed for the crime of being true to themselves. I want to live in a world where technology and social media can be used most purposefully: to spread knowledge and foster community.

Don’t you?