14 DAY TRIAL // An old but pretty dangerous online activity, cyber bullying, tends to become more threatening than anytime before, experts believe. Lots of teenagers admit they were victims of online harassment, many of them with ages between 10-15, mentioned several researchers in a special study according to Reuters.
"Youth harassed online were significantly more likely to also report two or more detentions or suspensions, and skipping school in the previous year," Michele Ybarra and other researchers from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore mentioned in a study, according to Reuters. "Especially concerning, youth who reported being targeted by Internet harassment were eight times more likely than all other youth to concurrently report carrying a weapon to school in the past 30 days."
The study, conducted by Michele Ybarra, revealed that no less than 64 percent of the respondents, who admitted they have been harassed online, said they have never been victims of such activities in person. This finding proves us that the Internet can easily represent a new category of victims, as the experts noted, but it also allows malicious persons to conduct dangerous activities without any limitation.
And with today's social networking technologies, all these activities can be done quite easily since they have millions of registered members from all over the world. Some time ago, the Facebook officials said they attracted approximately 250,000 new members every day, so it's pretty easy to find vulnerable cyber-bullying users.
That's why the web needs a solution to protect all these potential victims, but, until now, no one managed to find a way to block online harassment. One method would be the involvement of the parents, while other experts talk about restrictions over the web.
"The anonymity provided by new technology limits a victim from responding in a way that may ordinarily stop a peer's aggressive behavior or influence the probability of future acts, which provides an advantage to the perpetrator," Corinne David-Ferdon and Marci Feldman Hertz of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote in a study according to Reuters. "The primary recommendation we have for parents is to talk to their kids. Talk to them about where they go on the Internet, appropriate standards of behavior," Corinne David-Ferdon told to the same source.