Cyberbullying – an old deadly problem in the new time

TW: bullying, suicide, and other effects are mentioned

About 15-20% of suicides in Germany are done because of a consequence of bullying. This is an outcome of the researches of the website “Selbstmord nach Mobbing (experto.de)”.

Mental health clinics and psychiatrists are getting overflowed as time passes by. As old as we are, as new are the problems we have to face. Bullying does not only happen in schools, when you are younger, but also in workplaces. It always leaves marks on the victims. Like that is not enough, the opportunity of bullying someone is growing as the world becomes more digitalized.

But what is bullying in the first place and how is it connected to every single person in this world? Why is bullying such a deadly phenomenon?

The word bullying is often used, but what is bullying? Bullying is aggressive behavior, like the internet side ”Take Action: | preventingbullying.promoteprevent.org” describes, in which a person or even a group, who stands in a powerful position abuses one individual to hurt them physically or mentally, sometimes even both.

It is important to have a clear line between conflict and bullying. Bullying includes intentional behavior, repeated behavior, and a power imbalance. It can often be easily seen by an outstanding person, like a teacher or another student. For parents, who see their children only outside of school, it is of course harder to notice.

Cyberbullying is one of the four main types of bullying, next to physical, relational, and verbal bullying. This type of bullying contains to increase as digital media becomes more prevalent in the daily life of everyone. Mostly for kids and teenagers. To keep it clear, cyberbullying is bullying through digital technology, and it also has different forms such as harassment, cyberstalking, exclusion, etc…

As you can see in a chart by “Statista” the number of bullied people has increased nearly by half in 10 years, and it will be higher in some years if we do not stop it.

The most prevelant type of cyberbullying is harassment. Harassment means that for example you are nearly constantly in the middle of many different abusive acts, such as name-calling, being posted on the internet. And we all know, if something is posted on the internet, everybody can see it and it will never be fully deleted. You would feel terrible and so small. As if it is not enough to be bullied in school, not even the home of you, as the victim, can be your safe place anymore because media is in every inch of human lives. This again causes the feeling of being trapped in hell.

Feeling like that leads to symptoms like depression, self-harming, eating disorders, any types of anxiety, and much more which you can read on the website “Mobbing – Folgen | MEDIAN Kliniken (median-kliniken.de)”. In the worst case, people are killing themselves because they do not see any other way of being in peace again.

Any type of bullying is killing people or turning an abused person an into abuser. This creates a chain reaction. People are dying, families and friend groups are destroyed, clinics and doctors are falling behind because there are not enough resources, and our society is falling apart.

Again, bullying is killing people.

That is why I am appealing to you, to stand up for someone that is bullied, and to seek help because it is nothing to be ashamed of.

If there is someone that should be ashamed, that is the person which shows such disgusting behavior.

I know it is hard to speak up for yourself and to ask for help, but I promise it will get better once you do it. You are not weak and you are also not the one that should be blamed.

By Berdil Akgül, picture: Vania Barbara