Social networking websites, blogs, and cell phones have become the new weapon of choice for children and teens to bully. While schools notice cyber bullying’s effect on their students, the public watches the media cover story after story of victimized youth.
An Internet user can find articles on incidents of cyber bullying with ease. Typing “cyber bullying stories” into any search engine and pages of results for that search will be displayed. The sources shown vary from websites dedicated strictly to the topic of cyber bullying to national news websites reporting cases on their main page.
National news websites like CBS and NBC even have dedicated archives of stories on cyber bullying. The occurrence of stories posted to these archives is frequent and date back several years. Thus making creditable stories that much easier to find online.
Also the frequency of cyber bullying cases making headlines produces articles that can focus on reporting the details of the actual incident rather than explaining what the term “cyber bullying” means. Although there are articles being posted that still spend a large portion of the piece defining this new term, many writers give the term a simple sentence definition or even assume the reader knows what the writer is referring to. And even though it seems cyber bullying is a new craze among children and teens, the public is knowledgeable about the topic due to the media’s regular addresses.
Cyber bullying has become an epidemic in children and teens all over the world and has become an epidemic that makes headlines regularly enough that it is now a household term. The media, especially the Internet, has made cyber bullying an issue that the public will be educated on.
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