Question

Bullying in general, and cyberbullying in particular, has received a lot of attention in the media in the last few years. Do you think that cyberbullying is more/less/equally harmful than bullying of the past? Do you think the attention to this issue is successfully changing children's behaviour? Finally, do you think that some of the "zero-tolerance" towards bullying behaviour in schools is too extreme (i.e., interpreting disagreements or typical kids' fights as bullying)?

Answer 1

Cyberbullying has revived a lot of attention because it is shift in media bullying, that is, online portal of socialization are open grounds for shaming and bullying. And, it has provide cowardly people the liberty to abuse the power of anonimity. Cyber bullying is way more harmful than the traditional bullying as it has a penchant for snowball effect, once it starts its builds up putting tremendous pressure on the person being bullied.

There is still a lot of work left to be done with respect to awareness regarding this issue to thwart it completely.

Schools, in order to prevent bullying and the harmful after math of bullying have incorporated zero tolerance policy within their repertoire, but often these policies spill over into domain that do not quite require the intervention as they are misinterpreted by authorities. This can lead to more hostility if actions are taken against students who weren't originally engaging in the aforementioned behavior.