Cyberbulling - Research Paper Example

Unlike traditional bullying, cyberbullying offers anonymity to bullies contributing both to impunity of offenders. Alongside with anonymity, it is the significant distance between bullies and the bullied that lead to crueler actions and more serious consequences. The rise of cyberbullying is caused by technology, especially by the Internet, introduction of which was soon followed by chat rooms. The latter were supplemented by AOL Instant Messenger, a program that allowed users to communicate with each other privately or in public chat rooms for hours.

With its development, AOL Instant Messenger allowed creation of group-specific chat rooms. Telecommunication advances also contributed to proliferation of cyberbullying and cell phones in particular. The first generation of these telecommunication devices did not cause the rise of cyberbullyin; the second generation, however, did. The cell phones of the second generation appeared in the 1990s, and then spread widely. In 2010, about seventy-five percent of teenagers in the United States had cell phones, and one third of them sent three thousand messages per month.

Today, about seventy-eight percent of teeangers are owners of cell phones (Donegan, 2012). Further development and spread of the Internet as well as the introduction of social networking websites also have fostered cyberbullying. All the social networks allow to create profiles, which include personal information, photos etc., and communicate with other people. Such publication of personal information and distanced communication is dangerous for children because it puts them in the position of either a victim of cyberbullying or an active offender (Donegan, 2012).

The relatively short history of cyberbullying is notable for a significant number of suicides committed by victims. One of the most well-known cases is the case of a girl named Maggie Meier. She committed suicide in 2006 after her sister and mother created a fake account