Cyberwellness - Cyberbullying and Danger with Cyber Contacts

Cyberbullying

According to Bill Belsey, the definition of cyberbullying is to involve the use of information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated and hostile behaviour by an individual or group, that is intended to harm others.

Cyberbullying, to me, is against my conscience and we should never cyberbully. As we are given the privilege to surf the net, we should not abuse it and be responsible cyber citizens. A responsible cyber citizen should be polite to the people we talk to, be responsible for our actions and also remember that we should not give out our personal information.

Cyberbullying is a two-way thing, when you respect people, they in turn will give you due respect. When we are kind to others, they will be kind to you. However, if their comments turn nasty, we should immediately leave the chatroom or social networking site and seek proper help.

In my opinion, if you've been bullied online, it can be dealt with by seeking help from a counsellor, or a trusted adult. We should then avoid going online for a few days, so that the cyberbully will 'die off'. We should learn from the lesson not to give out personal information or get too close with unknown people online because you will never know the true identity of the person you are talking to online.

Danger with Cyber Contacts

Cyber contacts can refer to the people you interact with online. These people have unknown identities that we would not know of as they can be concealed very easily. We should never put too much trust into a cyberfriend, and never to reveal too much information about yourself. If the person requests for unreasonable things like meeting up face-to-face, decline the request promptly.

Cyber contacts can be dangerous and they may be sex offenders or even pedophiles which are very dangerous.

I have learnt that danger with cyber contacts is something very severe and can lead to dire consequences if we are not careful. We should never give out any of our personal information, be cyber-smart and know what is happening, seek advice from trusted adults if need be and to be a good netizen by not spamming or spewing vulgarities on social networking sites.

The End.