Online Bullying: The New Age of Abuse

Cyber bullying is by no means a new thing. I’m pretty sure that my generation were one of the first groups of teenagers to fully experience it. I am 22 now, and when I started secondary school, Bebo and MSN were the main social media that my peers would use, closely followed by Facebook. Thankfully, I have never experienced seriously bad cyber bullying, as most of the bullying I went through was at school- not that that’s any better. Online abuse is a whole different story though. Everyone seems to be subject to it these days: normal social media users, feminists, influencers, celebrities, those who openly speak about mental health, chronic illness and rape + abuse, and many more. Recently, I have spent some time thinking about cyber bullying, so I thought that I would write a bit of a different post today, and share my thoughts and opinions with you.

There are several communities on Twitter that I have recently become a part of. One of those, is of people who openly speak about childhood trauma, abuse and exploitation. If you don’t already know, I suffered sexual abuse as a child, so finding other people on Twitter whom had had similar experiences to me was a huge deal. Finally, I have people who really understand what it is like. One thing that has majorly shocked me though, is the abuse that some of these people suffer on a daily basis. I’m going to keep these people anonymous, as I want to respect their privacy. There is a woman who has been incredibly supportive towards me, but when she has spoken about the trauma she suffered, she has had disgusting replies from trolls- not even privately by message, they openly respond in a comment, which shows that they clearly don’t feel any shame about what they are doing. To me, this is an alien concept because I cannot imagine ever going out of my way to make somebody feel bad, whether in public or on social media. In my opinion, when people send abuse from behind a screen, they don’t think about the consequences of their words. They don’t have to consider what their words really do, as the chances are that they will never see that person in real life, and they will never face any kind of punishment for what they do.

Of course, there is a debate over what counts as ‘free speech’. I find it puzzling though, that people care more about their right to free speech, than they do about hurting others. Honestly, I can’t understand why anyone would try and put somebody down who is trying to make a positive change in the world. There is another woman who I am friends with- completely different community, and a completely different person. However, I have seen that whenever she tweets things which are her personal opinions, trolls respond with comments about the way she looks. Why do they seem to think that their right to ‘free speech’ and insulting someone else, is more important than the individual who just tweeted an innocent opinion that wasn’t harming anyone?

The most common example of cyber bullying that a lot of us have seen today, is what Drake Bell has had on Instagram. Fair enough, Drake Bell is not perfect. He made a controversial statement, which he did apologise for, and there are mixed opinions regarding whether the statement he made was actually a joke from the show he started in, Drake and Josh. Somebody took a picture of Drake, who obviously, has aged since he was in the Nickelodeon TV show, saying how awful he looks. So many people below the picture were insulting him. I think what has made this instance so much different from others, is that Drake actually responded, and let the bullies know exactly how the comments were making him feel. Firstly, I just want to say fair play to him for letting them know that their words actually hurt. How can anyone think that this kind of behaviour is acceptable though? Is it because he is a celebrity? Clearly not, as micro-influencers on social media and even just regular social media users experience this too everyday, as we previously discussed. There is so much less in person bullying than cyber bullying, which says to me that people seem to find it a lot easier to be a nasty person when they can hide behind a social media persona.

To be honest, it often feels like there is no way to conquer ‘trolls’. I think that the only way we can, is by not letting them win. Let’s show these irrelevant human beings that we don’t care! We’ll carry on posting photos, showing how our body really looks. We can continue to talk about our imperfections, or to share our opinions on Twitter- which is what that site is really for! Of course, as soon as one disappears, another will pop up, but by showing them how pathetic and insignificant they are, we can carry on living our best lives, being successful and having much more positivity in our lives than they ever will.