Abstract
Cyberbullying is a new form of bullying and brings additional challenges for school staff. In addition to the numerous benefits that information and communication technologies provide, it also contributes to the occurrence of negativities. One of these negativities is that it adds a new dimension to peer bullying, which is already a problem in schools. This bullying, which is called cyber bullying or electronic bullying, is a subject that has just started to be studied in other countries and has not yet been studied in Turkey. This chapter qualitatively examined cyberbullying and exposure of children to cyberbullying.
TopIntroduction
New media environments that have emerged with the developments in information and communication technologies have gradually reduced the age of using the Internet and have begun to play a vital role in the daily life practices of children and youth and the development of their identities. Livingstone and Brake (2010) state that social networking sites are rapidly adopted by children and young people worldwide. They argue that it offers significant new opportunities for fundamental issues such as self-representation, learning, building and developing networks, and maintaining and managing intimate relationships and personal privacy. Özkent and Açıkel's research results discovered significant positive associations between binge-watching behaviour and emotional conduct, cognitive problems, and DSM-IV–Inattention. From a democracy policy perspective, there was a consistently hopeful view that this could enrich freedom of expression and freedom of the press and that democracy would benefit from this development (Özkeçeci 2022: 43).
On the other hand, Internet technologies and new media environments, which offer many opportunities to users, also caused security problems such as encountering anonymous identities and loss of privacy and brought some risks.1. One of these risks is cyberbullying, also called cyberbullying or electronic bullying. Cyberbullying targeting children and young people includes bullying behaviours derived from traditional peer bullying, differentiated from it in various aspects, and expanded its sphere of influence. Cyberbullying behaviours that go beyond the boundaries of the school environment, which is relatively easy to supervise and control, by moving to electronic environments such as computers and mobile phones, are a severe problem. It can threaten children anytime and anywhere. Although bullying is not a new phenomenon, it has moved to the virtual world with the widespread adoption and adoption of new communication technologies, and it has been widely defined as a “cyberbullying” phenomenon. Therefore, cyberbullying emerges as a new type of violence that involves deliberately hurting or harming someone else using information and communication technologies. While traditionally, bullying behaviours are mostly associated with the school environment and framed by the supervision of educators, cyberbullying allows the victimization to take place at any time of the day by carrying the victimization out of school. This situation causes bullying to continue uninterrupted and widespread, independent of time and place. In other words, unlike face-to-face peer bullying, victims of cyberbullying do not have the opportunity to escape from negative comments and posts launched about them on the Internet. In addition, because these comments and posts spread to huge peer groups quickly, victims are also exposed to attacks and abuses by people they do not know (Campbell, 2005; Tokunaga, 2010). Likewise, the lack of apparent authority in cyberbullying and the reluctance of children to share the discomfort they experience with the fear of losing their freedom on the Internet expand the dimensions of bullying and increase its adverse effects on children.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Depression: Depression (major depressive disorder) is a common and severe but treatable medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, think, and act. Depression leads to constant sadness and a lack of pleasure in pleasurable situations.
Indirect Bullying: Telling false stories, activities, activities, games, etc., exclusion from activities, ignoring, ignoring, spreading rumours, spreading gossip, writing bad words about the victim in various places.
Victim: They are subjected to deliberate and persistent disturbing behaviour by those in a stronger position than they are.
Stress: Stress pushes one's mental and physical limits in new situations. The organism's response to adapt to this new situation is called the “stress response.”
Physical Bullying: Beating, pushing, kicking, taking things without permission, or damaging or hitting are actions that occur.
Loneliness: Loneliness or being alone is a feeling of being disconnected from the world mixed with a sense of emptiness. Loneliness is an emotion that goes further than a lack of friends or a desire to be with others. Lonely people may feel disconnected from society.
Overbearing: They are those who deliberately and repeatedly make offensive remarks and actions to students who are weaker than themselves.