Cyberbullying: Isolation, But Not Prevention

Sources: Popular Science (magazine)

YouTube, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram are all social network websites that people can go on. But they are all also ways cyber-bullies can bully other people. Bullying is something on the
Web that is growing and becoming a bigger problem. An anti-bullying charity called Ditch the Label organized a survey and came out with the results that bullying is twice as likely to happen on Facebook than any other site. A blog on Tumblr, called Vancouver Taddler, was introduced to the public last March. It was said to be based on a TV show called, Gossip Girl. It was basically a way to get revenge on other people, or in other words, the perfect way to cyber-bully anonymously. Fortunately, local authorities were able to find out who the culprit was and they stopped the blog from running. To try to tone down the bullying as much as possible, Facebook, created a Bullying Prevention Hub last November. It taught users how to block and report bully. Then, Facebook Admins, would warn or remove offenders. Many of the social network sites on the Web have similar systems. Taking these steps to stop cyber-bullying is good but, they can only stop the bullies after they have already harassed someone. Not before. Microsoft have tried to cut down bullying by using an algorithm in the Microsoft system to label players according to the number of times they have been muted or blocked by other players. If a player is "bad", they will be labeled with a red color, if a player "needs work" they have a yellow color, and finally "good" or "satisfactory" players are marked with a green color. Bullies that have a red color, will lose privileges and will have less people willing to play games with them online. If a player's credit worsens, they'll be matched up with other people who have bad reputations and will not be able to play with "good" gamers. Reddit also has a karma ranking system that shows you what posts are worth reading and what posts are not.
I personally think these systems and ideas are great for not only the gaming world but for everyone, who uses any social networking sites or plays games. 25% of all teens call themselves victim of cyber-bullying. I think that people cyberbully because they think that they are concealed and because they can be anonymous, nobody will know who did it, but because of the power to be incognito, people think they can do whatever they want. I guess, it's not possible now to completely prevent cyber-bullying. But I definitely think that even isolating these bullies is a good start.