Cyberbullying: Exploring Criminalization, Impact, and Prevention

This essay examines the contentious issue of whether cyberbullying should be classified as a criminal offense. The author defines cyberbullying as harassment through electronic media, highlighting its prevalence among teenagers and young people, especially on social media platforms. The essay explores the impact of cyberbullying, including mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and even suicide, with women often being the primary victims. It discusses prevention strategies, such as stricter regulations and parental involvement in children's social media activities. The author reflects on the need for rules and regulations, suggesting a tiered approach to criminalization based on the severity of the offense and advocating for campaigns to foster mutual understanding among social media users, alongside strong legal actions for extreme cases. The essay references academic sources to support its arguments, providing a comprehensive overview of the multifaceted issue.

Should cyberbullying be a
Criminal Offence ?

Table of Contents
Cyberbullying..................................................................................................................................3
Impact and Prevention.................................................................................................................3
Reflection.....................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying is the harassment through the electronic media and it is also known as
online bullying. This is increasing these days and it is now common in the teenagers and younger
people. Cyberbullying means the harassment through social media. In this the people used to
pass some offensive comments on their social media account. The most of the people use social
media these days (Whittaker and Kowalski, 2015). The social media is the easiest way to bully
someone. In the cyberbullying one individual user of social media comments on someone else's
online post or picture to express their feelings in bad manner. The most of the victims of the
cyberbullying are the women. On the social media it is easy to express the individual feelings
but the people are using it for harassment of others.
The most of the victims of this cyberbullying are women because they are the soft target
to the offenders. This criminal minded or non social element of the society use the good thin like
social media for their bad sins. In the cyberbullying is used by the offenders to target the people
who can't save themselves on the social media network. There are two type of cyberbullying, one
is to comment the rubbish on the public platform and other one is to bully them on personal level
by sending them the personal message. As the users of the internet are increasing the cases of
cyberbullying are increasing. The mobile phones are easily available these days and the users can
post this comments with remain anonymous to the victim. Sim cards are easily available to
everyone and to make the fake social media account is easy so, this is promoting the
cyberbullying. The main point is to consider the cyberbullying as a crime or not (Brewer and
Kerslake, 2015). The result of the cyberbullying are some times more intensive and hard to
accept. These offenders used the social media to target the celebrities and popular people to get
the attention.
Impact and Prevention
The cyberbullying has major impact on the victims. The people who are facing the
cyberbullying are deeply affected by it. It causing mental illness, depression, anxiety and
suicides. On the small level this can be ignored but when the result of this are in millions then it
is not good (Olweus and Limber, 2018). The people who are facing the cyberbullying specially
the women who can't share this with their relatives and parents, this force them to live in mental
pressure which leads to emotional illness. This kind of offences can be prevented by taking the

strict and strong against the offenders. In the teenagers this can be reduced by the interference of
parents in the social media activity of their children.
Reflection
In my opinion there should be some rules and regulation to prevent the cyberbullying.
This can be reduced by divided it ion the different categories and partially consider as the crime.
In the extreme conditions of cyberbullying the offender should be checked first and then action
against them should be performed. As per my view this cases can be reduced by developing
some mutual understanding in the social media user by organizing the campaign against the
cyberbullying. In the extreme condition strong legal action should be taken.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Brewer, G. and Kerslake, J., 2015. Cyberbullying, self-esteem, empathy and
loneliness. Computers in human behavior 48. pp.255-260.
Olweus, D. and Limber, S.P., 2018. Some problems with cyberbullying research. Current
opinion in psychology. 19. pp.139-143.
Whittaker, E. and Kowalski, R.M., 2015. Cyberbullying via social media. Journal of School
Violence. 14(1). pp.11-29.