Bullying goes online

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If there is one teen angst which the Internet has helped vent, then it is self-expression. While the cyber space gives relief to the typical rant of ‘No one understands me’, it has also led to entire lives being lived online, all the while neatly disguised under annotation. So, when you can like, love or follow someone, you can also hate, ridicule and harass, with or without the dislike button. The recent suicide of an 18-year-old Rutgers student is one such example, when he jumped off the Washington Bridge in New York, after being streamed online while on an intimate date, by his roommate. And while other incidents might not result in such dire consequences, they are no less harmful, with a huge number of them happening in our very own city, termed under cyber bullying.
Most teenagers and young people have at least one hate group on their list, on popular social networking sites, and the trend is only rising. Kritika Gupta, who studies in a famous public school in the city, tells us that it is fairly commonplace to seek revenge online by means of such groups. “There are so many groups which are formed against people who are not very popular, and then everyone becomes a part of it and posts comments. It’s like bitching on the net,” she says.
Cyber law expert, Pawan Duggal, who faces at least three such cases in a month, elaborates. “Kids create fake profiles on networking sites and fake e-mail ids, where proliferated unwanted content about a certain person is posted. In fact, there is new trend, which includes third party search engine optimisation, where the search engines are programmed to throw the bullying material as second or third option, on typing the victim’s name,” says the expert who agrees that India does not have any direct provisions for cyber bullying, but however the offender could be charged under the cyber harassment act.
While for real time bullying, the victim is often asked to stand up to it for cyber bullying it favours the bully even more. Ritu Dhingra, a counsellor for CBSE and the GD Goenka Chain of School, suggests that building confidence is the only way to tackle the situation. “It is up to the parents to inculcate a level of maturity and self belief in their child, along with a monitoring of the child’s online activities. Also, when such a situation arises, there needs to be increased parent to parent and teacher to parent interaction to create a safe environment,” she says, adding the most important advice for a parent in such a situation is to stand by their child and not let them feel abandoned and alone at any point.
Psychologist Jitendra Nagpal agrees. “There needs to be widespread awareness about the correct usage of cyber space. With the high level of freedom offered by cyber space, it is important to constantly keep their behaviour in check. Kids spend so more time online only when there is less real interaction with the parents. They should encourage their child to share things with them and feel free to discuss anything they desire,” he says.