Who can be affected by bullying:Teenagers & young adults

            Today’s generation of teenagers and young adults are constantly being consumed by everyday technology as our generation depends upon this for almost all their social connections. On average teenagers and young adults send over 3,000 texts monthly, spend 31 hours on a computer weekly and forty-three percent of teens claim to have been cyber bullied within the past year. Cyber bullying is a serious problem that is escalating quickly as more and more methods of social communication through technology are developed.

            A recent personal example of cyber bullying would be, the other day I was passing by my15 year old little brother while he was chatting on his facebook account. I first noticed his facial expression had a distressed look upon it and I asked what was wrong, but before he even had time to answer I seen why he had this look of  distress. He was talking to one of his now former church camp friends and she was continuously cursing and swearing at him for no apparent reason. This obviously was very upsetting to my little brother as he didn’t know how to respond to that type of language. It sickens me to know that such a young girl could think that talking to one of her “friends” in that manner was okay. It makes me even more upset to think that she would consider that method of persuasion in order to get what she wanted which was for my little brother to agree with her. Thus, I then advised my little brother to be the more mature person and not sink to her level and react to her fowl unlady-like language. I simply told him to either kill her with kindness or to let her choose her own path without being drug down that same path with her.

            The example above is a very mild case of cyber bullying however adults, parents, and even school officials need to be aware of all cases no matter how mild. My advise to adults and parents would be to always monitor and be able to access your child’s social accounts such as facebook, MSN, My space, Bebo, and Twitter. If your child claims he or she doesn’t want you to see something, most likely it doesn’t need to be posted on the internet. Another piece of advise I would have for parents would be to make sure all privacy settings on these social accounts are set so ONLY family, friends , or people that you trust can access this information.
STOP BULLYING