Sociological Aspect of Cyber-Bullying

Running Head: SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF CYBER-BULLYING
SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF CYBER-BULLYING
NAME OF THE STUDENT
NAME OF THE UNIVERSITY
AUTHOR’S NOTE

1SO CIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF CYBER-BULLYING
The advent of the internet and the online platform has opened a plethora of opportunities
for the common people. The people who had no scope of interacting with the outside world and
who were residing in the remote areas got an opportunity to widen their interaction and
communication with the outside world as well as gain access to a wide range of information. The
internet and online services have virtually made the world a global village. At the same time, the
negative impact of cyber-bullying has also increased with the internet usage. The essay focuses
on the impact of internet and how cyber-bullying has become a menace for the modern world.
The essay also attempts to present a sociological analysis to the impact of cyber-bullying.
Cyber-bullying is a type of harassing or bullying a person on the online platform. Cyber
bullying is also referred to as online bullying. Cyber bullying occurs when a person, normally the
young adults or the teens, indulge in the act of harassing or abusing another person in the online
social networking sites or online platforms (Boulton et al., 2014). The penetration of the online
social networking sites has enabled the users to have access to a wide range of opinions and
perceptions. The perpetrators of the cyber bullying actually inflict harm upon the person by
harassing, exclusion, impersonification, stalking as well as spreading rumors, sexual remarks,
threatening, leaking the personal information and threatening to inflict harm or rape the victim
(Pabian & Vandebosch, 2016). The Bullying can be identified as the repetition of the harmful
behavior, which is done with intent to inflict harm to the person concerned. The victims of the
Cyber-Bullying are usually identified as having lower self-esteem and have increased suicidal
tendencies. The common psychological factors, which affect the victims of cyber-bullying,
involve feeling afraid, angry, frustrated as well as depressed.
The Conflict theory can be used to explain the phenomenon of cyber-bullying. The
Conflict theory as has been stated by Karl Marx states that society is always in a condition of

2SO CIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF CYBER-BULLYING
perpetual conflict due to the competition, which takes place for the ownership of the scarce
resources (Brooks, Longstreet & Califf, 2017). The Conflict theory assumes that societal order is
brought about by power and domination in contrast to mutual consensus and conforming to
societal agreements amongst all the members of the society. The Conflict theory states that the
people or the groups of people who own the wealth and power attempt to hold it by any possible
extent even if that means discriminating against the poor and the less privileged people. The
conflict theory assumes that there is a constant conflict existing amongst the two groups in the
world. The groups are divided based on the possession of the wealth and resources or in the
words of Karl Marx, the factors of production (Tittle, 2018). The groups who possess the factors
of production are called the Bourgeoisie and the group who are discriminated against for not
possessing the factors of production are known as the Proletariat or the have-nots. These
Bourgeoisie class exploits the Proletariat to the extent where the members of the Proletariat class
develop a mutual feeling of resentment and anger about being exploited. This is where the
members of the Proletariat class develop class-consciousness and then they indulge in the
conflict with the Bourgeoisie class in order to gain control of the factors of production (Black,
2014). The Bourgeoisie comprises of those people who own the majority of the wealth and the
means of production and they are a minority in the population. The proletariat comprises of the
working class or the poorer sections of the society. According to Karl Marx, capitalism is a part
of an ongoing phenomenon of changing economic systems and capitalism was established on the
aspect of the buying and selling of commodities (Wärneryd, 2014). The laborers are the
proletariat groups and the capitalists are the bourgeoisie groups in the capitalist societies, The
imbalance between the workers and the business owners result in the eruption of the social
conflicts. Karl Marx believed that the problems can be easily solved through economic and