I believe cyber bullying is a serious social problem, which keeps growing by the minute.
Cyber bullying is becoming common among children, preteens and teenagers. It occurs
when someone is defenseless, harassed, humiliated on the Internet, text messaging, or
social network. Today, most kids are techno-friendly and are able to play online games or
send text messages and use other social Internet media at a very early age. Cell phones,
tablets and computers combined with the use of communication tools like text messaging
and social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) are increasingly used for cyber
bullying.
Structural functionalist perspective sees the problem as the social network. The social
network is an open gateway to let people communicate to another person online. The
dysfunction of these social networks is what creates the social problem, which is cyber
bullying. If Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram were to prohibited users from saying what they
wanted to say, users could fight it with freedom of speech. This makes the social networks
problem of cyber bullying harder to solve. For example, look what happened to Amanda
Todd, she committed suicide because she was being blackmailed, cyber bullied and
physically assaulted. Unfortunately, social networks give cyber bullies the cause to act on
their victim.
The conflict theory perspective is that, the new generation of children and adolescents
value cell phone, computers, tablets and technology to socialize more. This increases
exposure to cyber bullying. There are many young uneducated children and adolescents
that sign up to a social network where it is easy for anyone to communicate with them.
These social networks are the new sensation of today’s young generation; parents are
uneducated about these social networks then their children. Unfortunately, schools do not
provide enough education about online social networks that today’s generation uses and
abuses.
The symbolic interactionism provides many reasons for the problem of cyber bullying. For