I decided to write this blog post after watching a documentary on TV with broadcaster Richard Bacon about cyberbullies. The documentary discussed the fact of the increasing use of social network to bully, troll and harass people. In the infograpic below, it can be seen that most of the cyberbullying happens through Facebook. Furthermore, 25% claimed to be a victim of cyberbullying and 2/3 witnessed it. In addition, only 10% of the parents are aware of their children are being bullied online.
Cyberbullying has been increasing the last few years, especially under teenagers. They sit behind their computer and show inappropriate behaviour through social media, like posting negative comments on pictures or post pictures that makes fun of someone else.
There was especially one type of trolling, which astonished me completely: R.I.P trolling. With R.I.P trolling, people are trolling memorial pages, which are set up to honour deceased people. The R.I.P trollers will post pictures and caption the pictures with distasteful messages, such as ‘’LOL you’re dead’’ or ‘’Help me mommy, it’s hot in hell’’.
The documentary that I watched gave the example of Tom Mullaney, a boy who commits suicide because of cyberbullying, but is also a victim of R.I.P trolling. The trollers posted edited pictures of Tom with inappropriate captions. Some of the posts can be seen in the image below.
On the other hand, some people belief that one should just not open a memorial page, as it will lead to these events. They belief that the people should grieve offline and not share it with everybody. However, what I am really wondering about is why people would even think about trolling on memorial pages. What benefits do they receive of doing this and do they not have any morals?
References:
Nobullying.com (2014), Social media bullying has become a serious matter, available at http://nobullying.com/social-media-bullying-has-become-a-serious-problem/ [Accessed on 11 Oct. 2015]
Chen, A. (2011), Why people troll dead kids on Facebook, Available at http://gawker.com/5868503/why-people-troll-dead-kids-on-facebook [Accessed on 11 Oct. 2015]
The anti-social network (2012), available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTfV22Glb6Q [Accessed on 11 Oct. 2015]
I was shocked when I read this! I can’t believe these pages exists. I think Facebook should really do something about these pages and delete them as soon as possible. I still think they should allow for grieving pages, but they should monitor them closely. As soon as something negative is posted it should be deleted! I think companies should also increase awareness of cyberbullying. 25% is a lot! That’s 1 in every 4 people… according to statistics 9 people in our social media class have been cyber bullied. These numbers are so high and it really surprises me. I thought it was a phase a couple years ago but I never realized it’s still going on…