Traditional Bullying Vs Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying Versus Traditional Bullying
“1 out of 4 students in middle school and high school have been bullied,” an article by girlshealth.gov concludes. Bullying can cause victims to have negative feelings towards themselves. Across America, people from school-age to adults are witnessing bullying. Many say that cyber and traditional bullying are uniquely harsh in their own ways, but which type is worse? The answer lies between what happens to the victim and how they feel, what kind of people usually conduct the bullying, and what the long term effect on the victims is.
Most people argue that cyberbullying is the worst type of bullying. In an article by Wired Safety they define that, “cyberbullying is when a child, preteen or teen is …show more content…
Traditional bullying usually is a face-to-face confrontation between two people. One article defines traditional bullying as any, “repeated action or threats of action directed toward a person by one or more people who have (or are perceived to have) more power or status than their target in order to cause fear, distress or harm.” (Hazing). The two main types of bullying are physical and verbal.An article by NCJRS defines each kind as the following. Physical bullying includes hitting, kicking, pushing or causing physical damage to the victim or their property. Name calling, insulting, teasing, intimidating, racist remarks and other verbal harassment are all examples of verbal bullying (Electronic). To bully someone either psychically or emotionally you generally need to have some sort of power over someone to affect them deeply. “The power could be something like physical strength or popularity” (Bullying). If this is required, then it makes more sense that traditional bullying is also a group effort. Just like cyberbullying, the more people involved in the act of bullying causes greater emotional harm to the victim. The victim can feel the same emotions in each type of bullying, cyber and regular. The main emotions are, “depression, isolation and loneliness, anxiety, poor performance in school, health-issues, low self esteem, Marginalization, and thoughts of suicide” (Hazing). Again most victims are bullied …show more content…
Some may argue that traditional bullying is worse because it can cause punches to be thrown. This causes short term damage to the victim. The majority of people agree that cyberbullying is worse than regular bullying because it has the longest lasting effect on the victim. Anything that you post online is there forever, even if you delete it. In conclusion, cyberbullying is worse than traditional face-to-face bullying because of what happens to the victim and how they feel, what kind of people usually conduct the bullying, and most importantly what the long term effect on the victims

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