Platforms Vulnerable to Cyberbullying & Measures to Avoid them

Ugly. Fat. Horrible.

What happens if someone online calls you those names? What happens if they share humiliating photos of you on social media? What's more, they decide to harass you? If this occurs, you are most likely a victim of cyberbullying. Ever wondered, what are some possible platforms that you could get cyberbullied on? How do we avoid it while using these platforms? And, if we become a victim of it, what should we do? Let us learn more about this. Sending, uploading, or spreading unpleasant, harmful, misleading, or nasty content about someone else is considered cyberbullying. It can also involve embarrassment or humiliation caused by sharing intimate or private information about another individual. Cyberbullying can sometimes cross the line into illegal activities for which the culprit can be severely punished. It is most likely to happen through social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tik Tok including text messaging, instant messaging, direct messaging, and online chatting over the Internet. It can also happen through online forums, chat rooms, and message boards, such as Reddit or via email or online gaming communities.

With the prevalence of social media and digital forums, comments, photos, posts, and content shared by individuals can often be viewed by strangers as well as acquaintances. So, coming to the big question, how do we avoid such issues of cyberbullying while also being able to use these platforms safely? For starters, never post personal information or anything that is too private. Secondly, don't ever be gullible and never open messages from strangers. Furthermore, don’t forward chain mails, hoaxes or long emails and always make the habit of proofreading your messages. Additionally, always protect your account and devices and make sure that you log out of your account and remove all the saved information once you log in from any new place/device. Likewise, managing location sharing data can also help avoid such online harassment. However, if we still somehow become the target of online abuse, what should we do? For this, there are a couple of things that can be done, the first being; the golden measure of taking screenshots. In this world of digitalization, screenshots have come as a boon as it enables us to provide a proof of something wrong that happened to us on an online platform i.e. cyberbullying. Secondly, reporting all abuse to the relevant social media networks by clicking on the “report abuse” button can be something more that can be done while being a victim of cyberbullying. While the third option might not apply to everyone who’s the victim of online bullying as he/she might be threatened to not do so by the bully, it can still be applicable in some cases. Making a complaint to the police who can trace the IP address of the bully is something that can be done further in order to help the victim get out of this problem. To sum it up, if you’ve fallen prey to cyberbullying, always talk to someone who you think will understand your problem, don’t retaliate to bullies and make sure to assess the threat. With the world advancing to digitalization in every aspect, it's high time that we start looking into the crimes occurring at an alarming pace on the Internet every single day. Last but not the least, if you’re a cyberbullying victim, you need to know you don’t deserve it. And you can overcome it. With a stronger insight of cyberbullying, you now know how to prevent & identify it. So, don't give bullies the upper hand.

Fight back and carry the day! -Prerna Rathi