We need to change our Mind – Cyberbullying 

We need to change our Mind – Cyberbullying 

The world has changed severely within last two decade with the use of the internet, Social media and mobile devices. Almost all the people who born after 1970’s are connected through social media. People sharing all the things in social media from special milestones of their lives to day-to-day activities. The concern on privacy is less on these days but reveling more information on their lives. We have seen lots of issues emerged with the social media usage in these days. With thousands of issues aligned with the digital world, Cyberbullying caused heavy damaged to younger generations but specifically girls and ladies.

Classroom, Work place to Cyber

in 20th-century children were bullied in the classrooms and adults were often bullied in the workplace and other celebrities and top-class personals were bullied in newspapers, TVs and Radios. But now, All the people are bullied in Social media regardless of their mental, physical and social status. All the social media users are works as media reporters and most of the times share information’s without proof checking. In this case women more often, victim to cyberbullying. If someone posted wrong and misguided or edited information and status regarding a woman it will be a gossip within few hours. In south Asian region this is happening more often and they are not caring about actual problem and the actual cause of the problem. There is no any responsible agency to handle those type of scenarios.

For prevent bullying and developed mental situation of victims in school’s relevant authorities and the government took many actions including, training for teachers, discussion with parents, some disciplinaries for students, psychological sessions and etc. in the past. For the people in an employment, a place was protected by law to work without being bullying and disciplinaries were taken if any misconduct happens. In that time people were not that much connected and bulling in some place did not affect her social status in some other place. If you bullied in a school or work place or playground the people in other places were not knew it in the past.

But now people are interconnected and there is no anymore face to face bullying.  All the coward people are using social media to tell bad things about you. it is online updated and anyone in the circle can see it comment it and share it. Gossips are fly more often than any other information. people use hidden profile to threaten people and bullying them. Moreover, people tend to share that information without checking the reliability and trustworthiness. Nevertheless, they are judging people by their social updates and comments and gossips. The severity of these events would not seem danger until you got affected.

Bullying in South Asia

There are so many cases are reported in South Asian countries including Sri Lanka and India in related to mass bullying through social media. If a woman more related to political work and if she posted some pictures other parties often converted them as offensive photos for culture or religion or something and bullying her to the maximum level. But the Men are not going to bullied for that kind of events. Moreover, women in the society also not going to talk about those events and they are more tend to support bullying. On the other hand, educated people also not going to think twice about that incident and even they supported to bullying. The young generation in south Asia now almost connected with Social media together with mid aged population. Mid aged population do not have many knowledges about trust worthiness of information and most of the cases they trust any information shared. They are sharing and commenting in many posts without thinking about other side of the story. There are no any authorities formed to make sure content in the social media is trusted.

Young generation have different mindset and they always need to be highlighted among others in nature and that is normal. Also, they are bit aggressive and have high curiosity. They are interacted with each other and normally they have different opinions, love related issues, gender related issues and much more. So, they are trying to use social media as a weapon to threaten others and bullying others. But no in schools and movement concerning about this fact other than ban social media. But ban social media will not be work and it is not the solution since young have more curiosity than anyone.

How to overcome

There are plenty of reasons to happen those cyberbullying related issues and one of the major reasons is not educating younger generation properly. Since this is a different generation and we are moving to fully digitalized connected world with the lowest privacy all the people must know and accept others freedom and honor their privacy with respect. Moreover, it is important to clarify whatever information in social media before you share it, that education should be given at younger stage. All need to be educated regarding bullying and how we can overcome it. We have to encourage, help and stand together with all the women who victim for cyberbullying. Instead of hate, we need to farm happiness. We need share feelings, care each other and develop each other. that education should be given from the beginning. The education should be very important and it should not be only for the student. That should be given to all the community.

all the human has right to live their own life within the law. So, we need to honor others privacy, their feelings, emotions, lifestyles and freedom till it is not violating the law in the country. Women should have the freedom to choose their wants and needs and men and others should not be bullying them over their freedom. So empowering women and make forum against cyberbullying in a wide scope is really important nowadays.

Finally, we believe the government should come forward more than ever to enforce the law against cyberbullying and government and all the authorities should think about next generation of cyber activities and maintain healthy community. There should be a program to improve the thinking pattern of people for cope with the modern era. The bloggers and all the media personals should work ethically. There should be a program to identify trustworthy media personals and bloggers. The government should work with all the social media companies and need to improve the thinking pattern of people and privacy of users. I believe we need to have a forum to discuss ethics of cyber usage.

With the Improvement of education, community Intervention and government intervention is really important to make a better world without cyberbullying.

By: Duminda Koralagamage

       Duminda0728@gmail.com