CYBERBULLYING: Schoolyard Bullying Taken To The Next Level

Yesterday I wrote about my thoughts on teenage suicides and enumerated the possible causes of the act. From the known factors like family problems, substance abuse, depression, and peer acceptance, cyberbullying is recently taking a place in the statistics of teenage suicides.

Cyberbullying is a recent prevalence of online harassment that occurs via the Internet. But because its a new occurrence and the manner of conducting the act always changes, there is no clear-cut definition of the word. Bill Belsey, an authority on cyberbullying and who has conceived and created several help groups for teenagers who are victims of online harassment has defined cyberbullying as the use of "information and communication  technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behaviour by an individual or group, that is intended to harm others." 

The advent of the World Wide Web has opened the doors to infinite information and easy accessibility of every person. And as online communication evolves in chatrooms, social networking, and instant messaging, the chances for bullying to happen are becoming more central to young people's lives and more public. 

The harmful effect of cyberbullying is taking its toll. Because of its sheer relentlessness, the victim has no chance to defend and stop the attacks. In the movies or even in real life, we have witnessed how physical bullying happens to a kid in school. The bully punches the kid, utters shameful and derogatory remarks, but it only last for sometime. With cyberbullying, there's no escape as the information is generated and accessed by anybody 24/7, 365 days a year. Another harmful effect of cyberbullying is on how the perpetrator creates a maddening experience to the victim, giving him paranoid thoughts to who might be behind these attacks. The anonymity of the person is incapacitating the victim psychologically. The vulnerability of the person, low self-esteem, and lack of inner strength adds up to the possibility of ending one's life.

Here in the Philippines, cyberbullying has not yet reached to an alarming state where a life is taken because of the shame that it has created to the person (not that I'm aware of). But there are isolated and unreported cases that are happening in the social networks as we speak. Just yesterday, I came across an album of young girls tagged as mistresses of politicians and prominent businessmen is circulating on Facebook. 

Our government has no specific policies and measures to prevent cyberbullying and punish perpetrators. Several countries abroad are very serious about this and as a matter of fact, several laws were already created to stop cyberbullying in schools and the workplace. 

It does not hurt to give this subject a special attention by our lawmakers. Do we still need to pay a life before a law is made to protect and safeguard our children?

Read more on this: Cyberbullying Article by Bill Belsey

Teenage Suicide

The recent rumor that Kim Anderson attempted suicide post-Gerald Anderson relationship caught my attention, not because I'm a fan of them, but because of the escalating cases of suicide attempts and suicide incidents among our teenagers.


Several weeks ago, TV Patrol reported of a 13 year old boy who undauntedly took his life after his father scolded him in front of his friends. Overseas, several news about teenagers taking their lives because of cyber bullying is the center of debate among parents, schools, and the government on how to control such malicious online behavior (though I think the real issue here is who to blame?)


Suicide is the intentional killing of oneself. Reasons why teenagers easily kill themselves may have change through the years. Factors such as lack of parental presence and guidance, substance abuse and alcoholism, peer pressure and acceptance, poverty, depression and hopelessness from a recent loss or problems encountered by the adolescent were identified as the major contributors to suicide among teenagers. Recently, availability and accessibility to firearms and cyberbullying are added to the long list of causes.


From this point of view, the internet is the most cruel way of putting the teenager in a compromised position - to face the shame or end one's life. 


Suicidal ideations, are also common among teenagers. This means thinking about killing oneself and should not be neglected. This is actually a prelim to what the person is capable of doing. Active suicidal ideation is when the person thinks about and finds way to commit suicide while passive suicidal ideation is when a person thinks about wanting to die or wishes he or she were dead but has no plans to cause his or her death. Of course, active ideations are more considered fatal and must be given close attention.


We may encounter persons expressing to end their lives, as a joke or with sense of hopelessness after a crisis situation. Either way, in the perspective of psychiatry, these are serious conditions. Men are more successful in committing the act and the methods they use are more graver than women. Statistics on women attempting suicide is higher compared to men, since women are naturally fickle-minded, so to speak.


Although the act is intentional, suicide involves ambivalence. Everybody thinks that there's no way to help a person who has plans of killing him or herself and that once a suicide risk, is always a suicide risk are actually myths that the public are constantly misinformed. The ambivalence that these individuals feel during their depressed moments often prompts the cries for help evident in overt and covert cues. This is the correct time to reach out to them and find help form situational supports, choose to live, learn new ways to cope, and move forward in life.


Teenage life is the most crucial phase of a person's growth and development. This is the crossroad where innocence and maturity are intertwined. With the changes in their physical appearance, the need to be identified and acknowledged in a group is a very significant milestone that needs to be achieved. The presence of a supportive parent, welcoming friends and other support help can help lessen the tendencies of teenagers in committing suicide.