SINGAPORE: Cyberbullying has claimed yet another innocent victim. R Thivya Nayagi was just 20 when she took her own life on May 20 in Bukit Tengah, Malaysia, allegedly due to relentless cyberbullying on video-sharing social network TikTok.
On social media, where most of our lives are lived out, there is often no place to retreat, which can take a huge toll on victims, including social isolation, depression, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts and self-harm.Tragically, bullycide, or death by suicide due to bullying, has been on the rise for the past decade among young people worldwide, fuelled by online bullying that accompanies traditional bullying.
Victims are targeted in a variety of ways – from name-calling to more severe tactics such as being insulted based on their race, body size, gender or sexual orientation. Further, the lack of physical and social cues - we can’t actually see how people respond to our comments - means that there is a tendency to feel less empathy in online interactions.
In his 2018 book, psychology professor at California State University, Dr Mark Carrier, highlights how the shift to personal digital technologies has eroded empathy among children and young adults. On their part, although social media companies have taken steps to tackle bullying on their platforms, these have been belated, inconsistent and inadequate.more to tackle cyberbullying. The report argued that the duty to protect children online is relevant to both large and small social media companies, including start-ups.
last year, which also shone light on the country’s toxic celebrity culture, and precipitated collective soul-searching and a law change campaign.With workplace bullying exceedingly high in Singapore - Kantar’s Inclusion Index 2019 found that 24 per cent of workers were bullied in Singapore, the highest among 14 countries surveyed - cyberbullying has also crept into the workplace.
Sue Schueff, author of Shame Nation: The Global Epidemic of Online Hate, notes that social media envy and poor judgement compel many users to post and publish things that reflect poorly on them or get them into trouble. But studies have consistently shown that there is a high co-relation between cyberbullying victims engaging in bullying themselves later, as they develop problematic behaviour.A 2018 survey on cyberbullying commissioned by Talking Point found that in Singapore, about 63 percent of the 353 youths surveyed – largely in the age group of 13 to 19 - have been both a victim and a bully in the social media space.
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