Blog Post #2: Does Twitter torture or tease?

We all know about the dangerous effects of social media. People use it for advertising, for marketing, and for personal uses. But what we generally don't realize is that many people use social media to say hurtful things to someone that they would never say to them in person. Hiding behind a screen and saying mean things to hurt someone's feelings is not only cowardly, it is also abusive and unnecessary.

Take Twitter, for example. Twitter was originally programmed to connect and bring people closer together through the Internet. Today, Twitter is being used to harass others online. Being able to insult people through the Internet allows bullies to be hateful without having to physically face the victim.

Cyberbullying involves the use of communication technologies such as the Internet, social media networks, emails and text messaging to harass others. This includes: (i) sending mean or threatening messages to someone, (ii) posting embarrassing photos of someone online, and (iii) pretending to be someone else by using their name.

Some would argue that "freedom of speech and expression" should prevail even online, but there is a thick line that exists between commenting or posting positive things online and insulting or threatening someone. Although it is not illegal to hurt someone's feelings on social media, it is something that people have the ability to control and should control, simply for the good of humanity. Some extreme cases of cyberbullying have led to situations where people have committed suicide to avoid being a victim of nasty comments. If bullies and trolls could learn to control themselves when they feel the need to bring someone down, there would be hundreds and maybe even thousands of people still alive today.

Even though hurting someone's feelings is not against the law, it is illegal to threaten and intimidate someone online. Twitter is hoping to make online bullying (as a whole) illegal. Twitter is giving online users a tool to report the abuse to law enforcement rather than to just the Twitter staff.

Cyberbullying is not something that will go away on its own. It will continue to grow and get even worse as people are starting to use social networking sites more. Unless we can come up with a permanent solution to online harassment cyberbullying will continue to affect people who become victims of this cruelty. Social networking sites could take steps to ban the use of certain words online. This may be a big step that steps over our rights in freedom of expression, but consider it like this: would you rather have people control their hateful thoughts and mean words or would you rather have people commit suicide because of an insult that they read on their phone?