Social Media Weaponized
Capturing Attention in Social Media
Subjects that grab our attention on social media are information gathering, staying connected to friends and family, watching cute cat videos, looking up food recipes, craft ideas, news headlines or just about anything else. Unfortunately, one subject that should get our attention is cyber bullying. The saying “sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me” has a profound meaning with the use of social media since mean words can be said on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other plat forms. Mean words that travel fast and are seen by many. Bullying can have major consequences with the victims suffering relentlessly and some even commit suicide from being bullied or needing therapy to cope with the psychological effects of being bullied. If our attention is captured on cyber bulling within social media, it can be addressed and hopefully stops before there are terrible consequences.
Maintaining Engagement
What can we do as a society to stop bullying? We can engage online by staying informed of the subject and reading about it. It is important that we are engaged on social media to be the eyes for anti cyber bullying. One way to help with this problem is to be aware of what your kids are doing online. Another way is to get teachers and school staff involved and reinforce policies on how students are to treat each other. Another way is to teach kids about bullying, that it is not okay and how to handle it Listed is a website that addresses this: https://www.stopbullying.gov/ This website lists resources, prevention tips and talks about cyber bullying and bullying in general. Below is a map taken from https://www.stopbullying.gov/ that shows that many states have both laws and policies of anti bullying. Many people that bully do not realize that these states have anti bullying laws that could land them in legal hot water.
Whittaker & Kowalski(2015) contend “cyber bullying is increasing lately and three studies looked at cyber bullying among college age students and the mediums through which it occurs, while focusing on social media.” Whittaker & Kowalski (2015) discovered “in the first study, texting and social media to be the most commonly used ways of cyber bullying”. Whittaker & Kowalski studies shows that it is not defined by age as cyber bullying happens in college as well. Universities need to be aware that it can happen among their students.This map is encouraging to see, that the majority of the states have laws and policies against bullying and if parents and schools get involved, we can do so much together as we tackle bullying behavior.
Reference
Whittaker, E., & Kowalski, R. M. (2015). Cyberbullying via social media. Journal of School Violence, 14(1), 11–29. doi:10.1080/15388220.2014.949377