Cyberbullying and Social Media: Challenges and Solutions

In today's interconnected world, social media serves as a double-edged sword by both connecting people globally and facilitating new forms of harassment such as cyberbullying. This analysis delves into the patterns and impacts of cyberbullying among youth, drawing from various research studies, including those by Yahner et al., who highlight the co-occurrence of physical and digital violence. Additionally, it evaluates how social media transforms traditional bullying dynamics, referencing Doty et al.'s findings on protective factors like parental involvement. The analysis also considers broader implications for national security as discussed in sources like 'ISIS Threat: US Military Warned About Social Media Use,' which underscores the role of digital platforms in global threats and recruitment by extremist groups. Furthermore, this paper reviews ethical and forensic challenges in addressing cybercrimes, referencing Harichandran et al.'s work on evolving needs in cyber forensics. Ultimately, the assignment proposes a multifaceted approach to mitigate cyberbullying, involving policy changes, educational programs, and technology-driven solutions, emphasizing collaboration between parents, educators, and law enforcement.

Running head: MISUSE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Misuse of Social Media
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Introduction:
Social media today is used by unethical and illegal users to insult, bully and
threaten others without the fear of being punished. Dekker, Rianne, and Godfried state
that social media is even used to distort important national and international data by illegal
organisations to spread panic and fear among the common people. The social media
platforms today consist of video sharing and streaming websites like Youtube,
communication based websites like Facebook and picture sharing websites like Instagram.
The numbers of users of these social networking websites are so vast that is practically
impossible to monitor their activities. The users often use social media to bully and threaten
innocent people using fake names and often go unpunished which encourages them to
continue their illegal ventures. The essay would point out how social networking is used by
these illegal users to insult, bully and threaten others. It would also include facts like cyber
laws and how users prevent these unlawful attempts to arouse fear among them.
Discussion:
Insult and passing derogatory comments on the digital platform is one of the most
illegal and unethical applications of the social media websites. Unethical groups use social
media to pass insulting comments against certain communities and races. For example, there
are people who pass comments on others on the grounds of races, colours, creeds, religions,
sexual preferences or other any other personal attributes. Such comments make the group of
people being victimized threatened and endangered (huffingtonpost.in). The impact of these
racist and insulting comments on the social media is often disastrous. Today, most of the
countries like the United Kingdom share their human resources with other countries by virtue
of international ties between them. These means the population of these countries have large
proportions of residents from other countries. For example, the latest census of Britain shows

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that almost half its present population is from Asia and Africa. These people have their own
religions, cultures, traditions and even physical features like skin colours which are distinct
from the resident British population (ons.gov.uk). Thus, passing insulting comments on social
media result in fear, insecurity, agony and resentment among these people. These negative
feelings sometimes result in uprising and public show of anger against the racist comments
(news24.com). These clashes between the insulted community and the government of the
resident country (the UK in this case) may lead to breach of diplomatic ties between the
country of origin of the insulted community and the resident country (Boehme). According to
Martin, these uprising in countries and resultant international tensions endanger the security
of countries involved. The banned groups often use the strategy of cyber insult to create
diplomatic disturbances between countries to give ultimatum to their inhuman intentions.
These groups usually present these insults as ‘personal opinion’ which they share with their
‘friends and acquaintances’ on the social platforms. The serious impacts of hate comments
passed on the social media has led to the governments of countries like the United States
pass laws to detect and check this misuse of the digital platform. For example, the Federal
Trade Commission which draws its power from Section 5 of the Federal Trade
Commission Act seeks to warn consumers against unethical groups (ftc.gov).
Cyber bullying or using the social media platforms to bully innocent people refers to
passing incorrect information about others usually to cause harm to them. The unlawful
organizations use the social media to bully unsuspecting people to gain undeserved benefits
like gaining confidential financial information. The bully can take form of sexual
harassments, rumors about victims’ personal lives and threats (Kowalski et al.). These acts
arouse negative reactions among the victims like making them feel afraid, insecure, depressed
and even lead them to commit suicides. Compared to cyber insult, cyber bullying has more
damaging impacts on the victims. The mentally weak people often enter depression phase due

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to cyber bulling. Doty et al. point out that cyber bullying is prevalent in the workplaces where
a certain section of employees are targeted on the grounds of their attributes like sexuality.
The employees holding high positions and even peers often use social media platforms like
Facebook to harass female employees. This often results in the targeted female employees
resigning from the organizations which lead to loss of efficient employees, thus affecting the
productivity of these organizations. This has led the apex management of organizations to
make policies to check all forms of cyber bullying among the employees (Yahner et al).
Cyber bullying today has reached a new height and has financial as well legal
implications. Unauthorized groups usually camouflage as authentic financial institutions and
communicate with customers in forms of emails, calls and messages. They ask predetermined
questions to extract financial information from these customers like debit card details. They
use these details to obtain money from the accounts of these customers and channelize the
money to finance unlawful activities like terrorism. These illegal organizations again use the
accounts of customers to channelize their earnings back into the global economy, which is
known as money laundering (stopbullying.gov). This strong relationship between cyber
bullying, terrorist financing and money laundering has led countries around the world
monitor the flow of money in the accounts of the bank customers stringently. For example,
the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act or FATCA by the United States requires all
non-American financial institutions maintain record of their customers and to report their
identities to the US Department of Treasury (irs.gov). This clearly shows that such
stringent acts by financial institutions to prevent cyber bullying of financial nature limits
the liquidity of the accounts of customers. Thus, the impact of cyber bullying is restricted
to individual victims. It has devastating impacts on the financial conditions of the people
and even on the flows of money within the economies.

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Cyber threats are the acts of gaining access to data stored on computers without
gaining authorization from the owners of the data. The hackers often use virus and malwares
to intrude into databases of companies to gain confidential financial information to finance
their unlawful activities. These hackers steal information about customers and use cyber
bullying to gain access to the bank accounts of these customers to finance their unlawful like
terrorism (Bashir and Aqeel). However, cyber crime using social media websites is not
restricted to hacking information from company to finance inhuman activities. Unlawful
groups today threat top officers of the global multinational companies and government
officials to extort money from them. The militant groups today upload videos of them
threatening governments and countries on Youtube and Facebook. They use social media
platform to flaunt their power to endanger global peace and harmony. The governments of
developed and emerging countries in particular are subjected to these forms of threats
(abcnews.go.com). These threats usually create panic among the people within countries as
they often lead to waning of the trust of the people in the might of their countries to protect
them.
The three categories of cyber crimes using the social media platform are increasing
alarmingly mainly due to lack of infrastructure to punish the people involved in these
activities. The first factor which prevents the countries checking cyber crime is the lack of
proper ways to deal with them. The groups which indulge in cyber crimes are financially
and technically very strong. They use technology to protect their actions from being detected
by government agencies like defense forces and police. Moreover, laws of most of the
countries require the convicts or their representatives to be present to commence a legal case
against them. For example, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure in the United States
requires physical presence of the accused persons to protect their rights to justice
(uscourts.gov). The main players of cyber crime usually route cyber crime activities from

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outside their target countries. Thus, the Supreme Courts of the affected countries are not able
to convict these criminals which rid them of the fear of punishments. There are diverse ways
in which countries deal with cyber crimes and try convicts of the crime if caught. The
criminals often use these loopholes in the judiciary systems of different countries to escape
from being convicted (Harichandran, Vikram., et al.). Thus, complexities in judiciary
systems of countries are responsible for the cyber criminals carrying out cyber crime with
increasing intensity. The groups involved in cyber crimes on the social media are usually
linked to financially powerful terrorist groups. They bribe the top officials of governments of
different countries to escape punishments. Thus, the corrupted government machineries of
different countries are also responsible for increasing power of cyber criminals on social
media (Zuech, Taghi and Randall).
Conclusion:
One can conclude from the discussion that social media today has emerged as a
powerful platform to give shape to cyber insults, cyber bully and cyber threats without
the fear of punishment. The three forms of cyber crimes using the social media are
interrelated and have devastating impacts on the victims. Cyber insults hamper the societal
and bilateral relationships. The cyber bullying impacts individuals both at financial and
emotional level. The cyber threats impact companies, governments and their stakeholders like
the public. The loopholes in the legal systems around the world, corruption and lack of
technological infrastructure to prevent cyber crime in entirety prevent conviction of the
cyber criminals. The countries urgently require adopting a common legal system which
would allow trial of cyber criminals. The countries should minimize the corruption levels to
crackdown on cyber crimes and cyber criminals. This would compel these groups to curtail
their unlawful activities.

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