About Cyber Bullies and How To Deal With Them

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Cyber bullying is becoming a major problem on the Internet. It is something that is not understood by many people until they actually come face-to-face with it. Because bullying on the Internet tends to be more psychological than physical, many people are apt to dismiss it out of hand. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me" does not apply here. Words are the very medium of the Internet and they can be used with devastating effect.

It's not also limited to children bullying children, either. Many adults have become victims of cyber bullies as well. They're bewildered to find themselves singled out, treated differently from other people in their online group, margined, ignored, sidelined, overruled. They'll find that everything they say is being twisted or distorted. Their reputation is trashed. It doesn't help to quit a group and walk away from the situation. The bullies will often follow them online from forum to forum, group to group, chat to chat.

It doesn't take much to become the victim of a cyber bully. For children, the bullying often starts in the playground and is taken online. For adults, the bullying often starts online, usually with an innocent remark that is taken the wrong way. As Internet users, our communication with each other is truncated because it is limited to the written word, and possibly a few emoticons. Sometimes someone is perceived as a cyber bully when a remark is taken out of context. Then a flame war results.

Either way it starts, cyber bullying can morph easily into cyber stalking and even stalking in the real world. It may get to the point where third parties are required to become involved. Legal intervention may also become necessary.

Even if it doesn't get that far, the bullying can have devastating effects on it's victims. They'll manifest symptoms such as stress, tension headaches, migraines, sleeplessness, nightmares, irritability, poor concentration, depression, shattered self-confidence, low self-esteem and more. In the long term, it may result in the victim requiring physical or mental health care, or possibly both.

Why do cyber bullies act the way they do?

Boiled down to it's essence, bullying is about power. A cyber bully wants to put their victim in distress, Therefore the bully will embark upon a series of repeated, intentionally cruel actions against the victim that are intended to hurt or humiliate them. Reacting to the bully only serves to confirm their feeling of power. Their online mission has succeeded in their own minds.

Many cyber bullies work to convince their online peers to exclude or reject a victim. Their mission is to cut the victim off from their social connections. Once the person leaves or is 'banished' from the group, this serves to confirm the cyber bully's sense of power.

The Internet tends to provide people with a false sense of security, and thus makes it easier for people to do things they think they can 'get away with.' People will say things online that they would never say to another person face-to-face. They have a sense of being removed from their actions and the people they are tormenting.

Bullies bully because they can. They've gotten away with that type of behavior in the past and so they keep on repeating it. Unfortunately many victims never speak up. Many other people are also afraid to speak up against the bully. They are afraid that if they do, that will put them in the cyber bully's radar and they will be the next person to be victimized. This reinforces the bully's belief that they are untouchable.

How to deal with Internet bullies

Usually the best response is no response at all. If you react with anger, then the bully wins the round. If you react at all, the bully wins - they want the attention. Ignore them long enough and they'll do either one of two things.

1. They'll get bored and go away
2. They'll increase their efforts to get your attention. Hopefully they'll get to the point where they do something so colossally stupid that you can report to their ISP and get them kicked off the Internet.

Don't post a long dramatic good-bye message to your Internet friends. That is blatantly out-and-out telling the cyber bully that they've won. You validate their actions and make them feel like they can get away with more of the same behaviors.

Document every action against you. Create a private space online that exists solely for the purpose of collecting their mean-spirited posts, insults, slander, etc. If need be, you have evidence to back you up should you have to go legal on them.

If you run a message board and see a cyber bully victimizing someone on your message boards, don't let the message stay on the boards. If necessary, moderate the cyber bully so that they know that they are being watched and documented.
The law and cyber bullies

Different parts of the world have different methods for dealing with cyber bullies. Unfortunately in many instances it is difficult to get law enforcement officials and ISP's to take cases of cyber bullying seriously.

In Canada it is a crime to communicate repeatedly with someone if your correspondence causes them to fear for their own safety and the safety of others. Many other countries and ISPs do take communicated threats very seriously. In one instance that I know of personally, a person threatened to send someone else's computer a virus and then followed through on it. Even though the incident happened across international borders, the bully's connection to the internet was terminated by their ISP.

In many places it is also a crime to publish defamatory libel. In Canada that means publishing anything (this includes posts on message boards) without lawful justification or excuse that is intended to insult a person or damage their reputation by exposing them to hatred, contempt or ridicule. A defamatory libel may be expressed directly or by insinuation or irony.

A cyberbully may also be committing a Human Rights violation if their bullying spreads hate or discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status or disability.
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