GEORGE TOWN: “Cremate my body and release the ashes into the sea. No need tombstone and funeral. Goodbye”. Those were the last words found on the Facebook page of Teh Wen Chun, who fell to his death from a flat near his university college here A resident alerted the police at 5.
41am on Tuesday after seeing the body sprawled on the building’s compound. His death believed to have to do with the stress due to cyberbullying. Teh Wen Chun is like other normal boys that active in sports and have a quite well result in his examination, but yet he still cannot escape from the negative emotion that he accumulate from the cyberbullying and choose to end his life on Tuesday, 2 May 2017. Stories like Teh Wen Chun’s are becoming more widespread and are happen more often to the youngster nowadays in different countries and place and decided to committed suicide because of cyberbullying. Like traditional bullying at school, cyberbullying have the intention or motive to hurt other in physical and mental, which involve the bully and the victim. But the difference is the bully do not have to use the physical strength to bully victim like in the past, they can just accomplish their objective by using emails, text Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat to threaten, harass or embarrass the victim.
Even a big tall guy can be bullied today. Cyberbullying has become more common and still increasing till today. It is a shame that people use of the convenient they have today to hurt others. As we all know there is a lot of benefits when we use the internet in our daily life. But there are also plenty of risks and threats too that we should know or aware when we using it. One of threats is cyberbullying. What is cyberbullying? Cyberbullying is a form of bullying happens online.
It contains actions and words that are aggressive, intentional or behaviour which is carried out by a group or an individual, using electronic forms of contact, such as email, Facebook and Instagram repeatedly and over time against a victim who cannot easily defend him or herself. For example, the most popular type of cyberbullying include spreading rumors, posting humiliating photos or videos and create fake profiles and websites that can cause distress to the victim. Because they spread quickly across the web, they can rather be difficult to stop. According to the statistics that gather by CyberSecurity Malaysia, there were a lot of cyberbullying cases that happen in the past years.
There is 250 cases reported in 2012, 389 in 2013, 291 in 2014, 256 in 2015, 338 in 2016. In total there were already 1524 cases that been record in the past five years not included year 2017 and 2018 yet. Yes although the number is low compare to the other nation that have a higher population compare to Malaysia, but we need to realize the fact the number of case reported is increasing each year. Base on a survey that DIGI Telecommunications Sdn Bhd and Telenor Group done in 2016, they said that there is one in among four student that have experienced cyberbullying.
Why are the reason bullying happens? According to professional’s research it is due to several factors. First of all is the bully have experienced a stressful or traumatic situation in the past 5 years. Example of the situation is like their love one or relative is death or their parents is divorce and splitting up. They then relieve their stress by starting to bully others which make them can temporarily to forget their pain but usually become worse in long term. They just do not know how to respond toward their stress positively. Secondly is low self-esteem.
The bully want to cover how they feel about themselves and point their finger toward someone else. They know that it is hard to survive to the standard that society set to the beauty and fitness, they know that they cannot live up to it, but then they deflect the negative attention directed to them by pointing others out. Thirdly, the bully also have experience bullying before. As the bully think that they will become invincible to being bullied if they bully other. Finally is their home environment. Because they lack of their parents attention and love they think that everyone should be the same by no receiving love.
Cyberbullying can cause the victim to face an emotional and psychological issue as they have receive a significant impact and keep in themselves. For the people who is a victim of a cyberbullying, which is online bully, may have experience the feelings of depression, anxiety, stress, loneliness, helpless and all this may also cause the victim to deal a great difficulty to sleep. As they receive these negative energy and have nowhere to release or people to talk with, it will disturb the victim’s life. For example, the victim’s academic performance may drop, their appetite might decrease and cause to a poor or unhealthy eating habits, they also may have a social withdrawal from others as they feel no confidence towards themselves, have a thought or feeling that they are not important to the society and lastly have the idea to suicide.
We can see from here how serious is cyberbullying can be to the victims. To prevent the cyberbullying from happen is by letting the victim learn how to protect themselves, which is the most important. First of all, the victim must know that they do not have to be bullied. The victim need to have the mind set to know that sometimes it’s not their fault, do not just because they always be treat badly then they feel that it is natural. Secondly, do not give the reaction or what the bully expected to get.
Because that will only make the bully to become worse as this is their main source of power, so victim need to think a way to break that. Thirdly, find someone that can help. Victim need to reach out for help, try to find backup to support and help to work through it. Finally if someone you know is being bullied, reach your hand to him or her. Do not become a bystander, the best way to stop a bully is by against it. Even listen to your friend’s word will help to reduce his or her pain. Try to figure out together a way to solve the problem that faced. Of course parents also play an important role in stopping cyberbullying.
Pay attention to your kids no matter how busy you are, listen to what they want to say, or know how they do in their daily life. As some of the bully bully others to get attention from their love one, while the victim will try to seek help through their close one. If your child come to you and ask you for your help consider yourself lucky as most of the youngsters nowadays don’t usually talk their problem with their parents much. So it is important to stay patient to the children so that they can talk with you openly. Government is also important I stopping the cyberbullying. As they can use their power to spread that what is cyberbullying and how will cyberbullying do to the victim through the social media. People will then become aware as they listen and see the advertisement over and over again and start to remember in mind. Finally as most of the teen spend more school, it makes that school is likely the place that become the point of the beginning of the cyberbullying cases.
Which cause the teacher to play over the role to watch and guard over them, they need to be alert and stay sharp so that can stop bad things before it happen. There are people that said that internet is all the reason why cyberbullying happen but I do not agree with the statement. Because it is depend on the user to decide how to use it as the item have no thought and emotionless because the item is a non-living thing; but we human are, so we need to have decide how to use the item so that it is beneficial for us. As for example, if a person kill a man with a gun would you said that the gun is guilty or the person who hold the gun and decided to open the fire guilty? The conclusion is the internet bring a lot of benefit toward humanity and we as human need to learn how to use it in a good way and do not waste the convenient that had made for us.
