Cyberbullies Are Terrorists

The statistics on bullying and suicide are alarming:

• Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people, resulting in about 4,400 deaths per year in America alone, according to the CDC. For every suicide among young people, there are at least 100 suicide attempts. Over 14 percent of high school students have considered suicide, and almost 7 percent have attempted it.


• Bully victims are between 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than non-victims, according to studies by Yale University.


• A study in Britain found that at least half of suicides among young people are related to bullying.


• 10 to 14 year old girls may be at even higher risk for suicide, according to the study above


• According to statistics reported by ABC News, nearly 30 percent of students are either bullies or victims of bullying, and 160,000 kids stay home from school every day because of fear of bullying.


• Bully-related suicide can be connected to any type of bullying, including physical bullying, emotional bullying, cyberbullying, and sexting, or circulating suggestive or nude photos or messages about a person.


• Some schools or regions have more serious problems with bullying and suicide related to bullying. This may be due to an excessive problem with bullying at the school. It could also be related to the tendency of students who are exposed to suicide to consider suicide themselves. [CITATION]
  


• Cyberbullying does not just apply to children. There are adult groups dedicated to harassing and defaming others as well, along with websites created online specifically to make fun of and demean individuals. These people can be found in communities linked to blogs and chat rooms and they use the disguise of “anonymity” to harass their prey. Sometimes, these bullies will take their online squabbles offline and press people online to harass their prey\'s family and friends.


• When it happens with youth, it is known as cyberbullying, and with adults, it referred to as cyberharrassment.  Either way, it's the same effect - using electronic communications to embarrass, humiliate, harass, or otherwise torment someone through e-mail, social media, and other forms of online communication.

Adults and the Workplace

• Cyberbullying is not limited to personal attacks or children. Cyberharassment, referred to as cyberstalking when involving adults, takes place in the workplace or on company web sites, blogs or product reviews.


• A survey of 1,072 workers by the Dignity and Work Partnership found that one in five had been bullied at work by e-mail and research has revealed 1 in 10 UK employees believes cyberbullying is a problem in their workplace.


• Cyberbullying can occur in product reviews along with other consumer-generated data are being more closely monitored and flagged for content that is deemed malicious and biased as these sites have become tools to cyberbully by way of malicious requests for deletion of articles, vandalism, abuse of administrative positions, and ganging up on products to post "false" reviews and vote products down.


• Cyberstalkers use posts, forums, journals and other online means to present a victim in a false and unflattering light. The question of liability for harassment and character assassination is particularly salient to legislative protection since the original authors of the offending material are, more often than not, not only anonymous, but untraceable. Nevertheless, abuse should be consistently brought to company staffers' attention. [CITATION]
  

INTERNET TROLLS

• In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as a forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional responseor of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.  The noun troll may refer to the provocative message itself, as in: "That was an excellent troll you posted."


• While the word troll and its associated verb trolling are associated with Internet discourse, media attention in recent years has made such labels subjective, with trolling describing intentionally provocative actions and harassment outside of an online context. For example, mass media has used troll to describe "a person who defaces Internet tribute sites with the aim of causing grief to families.

Troll Sites

While many webmasters and forum administrators consider trolls a scourge on their sites, some websites welcome them. For example, a New York Times article discussed troll activity at 4chan and at Encyclopedia Dramatica, which it described as "an online compendium of troll humor and troll lore". This site and others are often used as a base to troll against sites that their members can not normally post on. These trolls feed off the reactions of their victims because "their agenda is to take delight in causing trouble".

United States

On March 31, 2010, the Today Show ran a segment detailing the deaths of three separate adolescent girls and trolls' subsequent reactions to their deaths. Shortly after the suicide of high school student Alexis Pilkington, anonymous posters began trolling for reactions across various message boards, referring to Pilkington as a "suicidal slut", and posting graphic images on her Facebook memorial page. The segment also included an expose of a 2006 accident, in which an eighteen-year old fatally crashed her father's car into a highway pylon; trolls emailed her grieving family the leaked pictures of her mutilated corpse.  In 2012, the subject of trolling was featured on the HBO series "The Newsroom".

Australia

In February 2010, the Australian government became involved after trolls defaced the Facebook tribute pages of murdered children Trinity Bates and Elliott Fletcher. Australian communications minister Stephen Conroy decried the attacks, committed mainly by 4chan users, as evidence of the need for greater Internet regulation, stating, "This argument that the Internet is some mystical creation that no laws should apply to, that is a recipe for anarchy and the wild west." Facebook responded by strongly urging administrators to be aware of ways to ban users and remove inappropriate content from Facebook pages. In 2012, the Daily Telegraph started a campaign to take action against "Twitter trolls", who abuse and threaten users. Several high-profile Australians including Charlotte Dawson, Robbie Farah, Laura Dundovic, and Ray Hadley have been victims of trolling.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, contributions made to the Internet are covered by the Communications Act 2003. Sending messages which are "grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character" is an offense whether they are received by the intended recipient or not.  As of September 2011, two persons have been imprisoned in the UK for trolling.Several high profile cases of trolling have been reported in the United Kingdom, with there being wide disparity between the action taken against assailants. In the case of teenager, Natasha MacBryde, who died a tragic death, the troll of her testimonial page, Sean Duffy, was sentenced to 18 weeks in prison and banned from using social networking sites for five years. This compared with Jamie Counsel being sentenced to four years for trying to incite riots and those who trolled the testimonial page of Georgia Varley facing no prosecution due to misunderstandings of the legal system in the wake of the term trolling being popularized. [CITATION]

It's time bullying was a Criminal Code Offense. After the damage has been done is not when the action should be taken.

HERE ARE THE ITEMS THAT NEED TO BE PUT IN PLACE IN ORDER TO END THIS NEW EPIDEMIC OR OUR TIME:

1.  National Hotlines for Reporting Cyberbullying & Cyberharassment should be implemented in all cities, states, countries

2.  Websites/Webpages/Blogs/Video dedicated to slander and defamation of character to be shut down due to liability issues to the victims involved

3.  National Cyber Crime Task forces to track down anonymous offenders by IP, Email, and other addresses should be implemented in each city, state, country to prevent any serious issues happening from the crime of Cyberbullying/Cyberharassment