CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that

involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the

potential to be repeated, over time. Bullying includes actions such as making threats,

spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone

from a group on purpose.

Cyber bullying is different from traditional bullying due to the anonymity that the

Internet can provide. Cyber bullies do not have to own their actions due to the anonymity

and cyber bullying is often outside of the legal reach of schools and school boards since it

often happens outside of the school.

As the days, years and generations pass by, the world of social media is growing

bigger and bigger. It becomes more advanced than ever and a lot of people want it to

improve and they think that it would be better if it continues to develop more than the

usual thing that we have nowadays. As it continues to grow, people have the advantages

it has been helpful to them in many aspects like connecting to other people easily by

chatting them or posting something that makes them feel like they're just close to where

you are. But opposite of the advantages that they have, they also have the disadvantages

of using social media like they experience cyber bullying which can affect them

emotionally. This cyber bullying is also growing which is resulting to more incidents of

it.
 Many people already experienced cyber bullying, not only the known

personalities like the government officials and celebrities but also an ordinary individual

may experience it. Cyber bullying causes the victim to be hurt emotionally. According to

ETCB or End to Cyber Bullying Organization, there are five different forms of cyber

bullying. First is the harassment, it includes the bully sending offensive and malicious

messages to an individual. Cyber stalking is form of harassment that includes sending

rude and threatening messages that can lead to a physical harassment. The second is

flaming which is somewhat similar to harassment but the difference is it often direct

harsh languages to a specific person. The third is exclusion, I think many people already

experience this because it's something that is common thing that people do sometimes.

The exclusion is like you're in a group chat and then they blocked you and kicked you out

of the chat and after that they will talk badly of you, that is what we called exclusion. The

fourth is outing, that is when the bully posts something about an individual but the

individual doesn’t know about that. The last one is what we called masquerading which

includes the bully to fake his identity. The bully impersonates his chosen individual and

harasses someone anonymously. In other words, cyber bullying looks like it's easy to do

and it's really not an issue but no, all of this creates mess and hurts an individual

emotionally that's why we decided to do a research with this topic to know what are the

different ways to prevent cyber bullying to cause more problems in our own places.

The purpose of this paper is to further understand cyber bullying which continues

to occur more often as technology becomes more readily accessible by everyone,

especially students and to explore ways of preventing cyber bullying before it happens.
Objective of the Study

There's one form of bullying that can affect one particular person even though it's

not through a physical or verbal contact, it is cyber bullying. This is a major problem that

occurs in social media and many individuals have already experienced this.

This is why we, the researchers have the following general and specific objectives of the

study:

General Objectives:

1. To identify the causes of cyberbullying.

2. To identify the effects of cyberbullying.

Specific Objective:

1. To know how we could prevent this type of bullying.

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

FOREIGN STUDY

According to the study of Sharon Padgett and Jessica Roden, the word cyber

bullying did not even exist a decade ago, yet the problem has become a pervasive one

today. Cyber bullies do not have to be strong or fast; they just need access to a cell phone

or computer and a desire to terrorize. Anyone can be a cyber-bully, and such persons

usually have few worries about having face-to-face confrontation with their victims. In

fact, the anonymity of cyber bullying may cause students who normally would not bully

in the tradition-sense to become a cyber-bully.

According to the “Bullying and Cyber bullying: History, statistics, law,

prevention, and analysis” by Richard Donegan of Elon Univeristy in America,

Technology’s progression is often equated with the advancement of human societies.

Pivotal innovations, such as the Internet, have forever changed how people interact.

Though these developments have allowed the human race to make great strides in many

fields, they have also allowed forms of transgression to become more rampant and

widespread. This is evident when considering how traditional bullying has evolved into
an issue today known as cyber bullying. While bullying and cyber bullying are often

similar in terms of form and technique they also have many differences. Unlike

traditional bullying, cyber bullying allows the offender to mask his or her identity behind

a computer. This anonymity makes it easier for the offender to strike blows against a

victim without having to see the victim’s physical response. The distancing effect that

technological devices have on today’s youth often leads them to say and do crueler things

compared to what is typical in a traditional face-to-face bullying situation.

According to Mesch (2009), cyber bullying emerges most commonly from

relationship problems (break-ups, envy, intolerance, and ganging up); victims experience

powerfully negative effects (especially on their social well-being); and the reactive

behavior from schools and students is generally inappropriate, absent, or ineffective.

Smith et al (2008), found in line with Raskauskas and Stoltz (2007), that cyber

victims had also often been traditional victims, and cyber bullies had often been

traditional bullies; many traditional victims or bullies were not cyber victims or bullies,

since cyber bullying is substantially less frequent. Cyber victims are more dependent

upon the internet, feel less popular, take more internet-related risks, are more often a

bystander and perpetrator of internet and mobile phone bullying, and are less often a

perpetrator and more often a victim of traditional bullying.

According to Guilia Mura, Cidgem Topcu, Ozgur Erdur-Baker of Middle East

University, the study underlined a high occurrence of ICT usage and the experience of

both cyber bullying and cyber victimization among two samples. It seems likely that

cyber bullying and victimization may be more connected to the use of ICT than

nationality and cultural factors, as Italian and Turkish seem to share very close
experiences in the usage of ICT. Moreover, while previous studies usually detected cyber

bullying and victimization among secondary school students, the research shows the

presence of such phenomena also in older and more educated age groups. According to

From classroom to “chat room: perception of cyber bullying in Hong Kong schools” by

University of Hong Kong, Bullying has been recognized for a long time, but a question

remains about the seriousness of traditional bullying and cyber bullying in Hong Kong.

Moreover, it is essential to explore whether there are any changing patterns between

traditional bullying and cyber bullying. Thus the following is going to analyze the

seriousness of bullying in Hong Kong and try to determine whether any prediction can be

made on the trend of traditional bullying and cyber bullying. Wong suggested that school

banding is related to school bullying and that schools with higher academic achievements

have less bullying. He also explained that students with better academic results may have

some personality characteristics such as high conscientiousness, obedience and self-

discipline which are contrary to bullying.

LOCAL STUDY

According to Shella Guevarra, cyber bullying remains under reported in the

Philippines because few parents or schools want to place the cyber victims’ or schools’

reputation under public spotlight.

According to the research of Marlon de Lara, Cedrci Arcejo and Melvin Marcelo

of Nueva Ecija University of Science and Technology, This study examines ways in

which schools can prevent cyber bullying and, when necessary, intervene when cyber

bullying does occur. In finding a possible solution to cyberbullying, victims will feel

safer, not only in their homes, but at school as well.

of their schools to the privacy of their homes. Many victims of cyber bullying are bullied

from the moment they wake up and check their cell phone or email, to the time they go to

bed and shut off their computer or cell phone.

According to Takumi, The survey also said three out of 10 children aged 7 to 12

were bullied through threats, two were oppressed through photo editing, one were

humiliated or had their private conversations exposed, and three were either excluded or

impersonated through fake accounts. In teenagers, photo editing had affected three out of

10 students, while two out of 10 were either humiliated or threatened. One out of 10 also

said they were bullied by having their secret conversations exposed, while two suffered

impersonation or had experienced exclusion.

According to “Cyber bullying Philippines”, there was recently a report released

about the way that Philippines residents may be responding to these kinds of changes.

The report indicated that people are increasingly searching for cyber bullying terms

through a wide array of social media venues. Notably, the Philippines was the world’s 4th

leading country when it came to searching for “cyber bullying” through Google. This

indicates that local residents are taking an increased interest in what they can find through

this kind of report. This could actually help people develop a complete view of the issues

that coincide with this kind of bullying phenomenon.

According to Willard, there are three related concerns in addition to the nine

forms of cyber bullying. These are students disclosing massive amounts of personal

information via the Internet, becoming 'addicted' to the Internet to the point where their

lives are highly dependent on their time spent online, and the prevalence of suicide and
self-harm communities in which depressed youths will sometimes access to gain

information on suicide and self-harm methods.

In “Confronting cyber-bullying” (2009), Shariff overviews additional concerns

related to cyber bullying. These are anonymity, an infinite audience, prevalent sexual and

homophobic harassment, and permanence of expression. Anonymity refers to the 8

anonymous nature of cyberspace in which people are able to hide behind screen names

that protect their identity, which was mentioned earlier in this chapter. The online

audience is described as being infinite due to the large number of people that are able to

see what is written by the bully and the tendency of onlookers to support the perpetrators

rather than the victim.

According to a study conducted in 2008 by Melissa, females are as likely, if not

more likely, to be involved in cyber bullying in their lifetime. Although, when students

were asked about their recent experiences of being cyber bullies, males and females

responded equally. When asked about lifetime participation, females reported higher rates

of participating in cyber bullying, which leads one to believe females engage in these

activities for a longer period of time. Females tend to take pictures of victims without

them knowing and posting them online more than males did. Females also tend 12 to post

things online to make fun of someone more often, although males tend to send emails to

make them angry or to make fun of them.

FOREIGN LITERATURE

According to the blog “2016 cyber bullying data”, cell phones and other mobile

devices continue to be the most popular technology utilized by adolescents with the top

four reported weekly activities involving their use. Facebook remains the most frequently
cited social media platform used on a weekly basis, but Instagram and Snapchat are

increasing in popularity. Chat rooms, Tumblr, and Ask.fm remain largely unpopular

among this age group. For this study, we contracted with three different online survey

research firms to distribute our questionnaire to a nationallyrepresentative sample of

middle and high school students. We had four different versions of our survey instrument

which allowed us to ask a variety of questions to subsamples of each group. All students

were asked questions about experiences with bullying and cyberbullying, digital dating

abuse or violence, digital self-harm, sexting, and sextortion. Overall we obtained a 13%

response rate, which isn’t amazing, but is higher than most generic Internet surveys. With

any imperfect social science study, caution should be used when interpreting the results.

We can be reassured somewhat in the validity in the data, however, because the

prevalence rates are in line with results from our previous school-based surveys.

Moreover, the large sample size helps to diminish the potential negative effects of

outliers. Finally, steps were taken to ensure valid responses within the survey instrument.

For example, we asked the respondents to select a specific color among a list of choices

and required them to report their age at two different points in the survey, in an effort to

guard against computerized responses and thoughtless clicking through the survey.

According to Patchin in his blog, despite a significant amount of attention by both

the academic community and society at large, there continues to exist much confusion

about both the conceptual and operational definitions of cyber bullying (and by

implication, bullying in general). The trouble with this lack of clarity is that it leads to

misinformation and misunderstanding about the phenomena at hand, and undermines the

ability of various stakeholders to identify, prevent, and respond to these behaviors. In this
article, we review the essential elements of cyber bullying that distinguish it from other

peer-to-peer online interactions in an effort to inform current-day approaches to its study.

We also present a cyber-bullying scale that has demonstrated strong initial validity and

reliability in ten different surveys involving nearly 15,000 students in the United States.

The purpose is to reduce erratic and fitful advancement of our understanding of cyber

bullying by fostering more consistency in the way it is measured and analyzed. Through

this effort we hope to meaningfully assist those on the front lines of the problem to better

know what cyber bullying is, and what it is not.

According to the US Department of Justice, Cyber bullying usually has longterm

detrimental effects on a victim. Truancy is quite common when a victim is continually

bullied both in-person and through technology. Also, their grades may suffer, their self-

esteem is hurt, depression can set in, they may have increased healthrelated issues, abuse

of alcohol and/or drugs may begin, and many more negative effects can occur, depending

on the child. With children using technology at younger ages, the data collected in past

years is becoming less relevant. In 2010-2011, the School Crime Supplement reported

9% of children in grades 6-12 are cyber bullied, but the increase in children that use

technology can result in a much higher number.

LOCAL LITERATURE

According to the blog of Erick Manriquez, the victims and impact cyber bullying

has caused, how to prevent cyber bullying, and the laws in several states regarding cyber

bullying. Cyber bullying is very similar to traditional bullying. Cyber bullying involves

more emotional and psychological harm. Cyber bullying can also lead to violence, if the

cyber bully decides to physically attack their victim. Cyber bullying has a broader
audience; anyone in the world can see the hateful messages left by a bully. Cyber

bullying can involve social networking sites, text messages, websites, and emails.

Humiliating messages and videos can spread fast and cause more harm. There have been

several killings and suicides due to cyber bullying. The most effective method of

prevention is education and awareness of cyber bullying. Several states have different

laws pertaining to cyber bullying.

The culture of the cyber bullying in the Philippines by ASKonnie, cyber bullying

refer to minors while cyber harassment and cyber stalking for adults. The three refers to a

similar behavior that uses technology as medium to sow fear and strip the victim of self-

worth and dignity. Stalking though, has an offline component. On Philippine context,

media only refer to these as bullying, hopefully, when a law is passed, the terms will be

standardized. Likewise, bullies exist even before the cyber age, the technological

advancement just gave them another tool to step up the attack at the same time remain

anonymous.

According to the blog of Christina (2012), Bullying is something that should

never be taken lightly and it is something that happens more often than not to those on

the spectrum. There are multiple factors that play a part into this happening more

frequently to those on the spectrum than neurotypical counterparts. While human beings

and particularly those on the spectrum are known for their resiliency, bullying takes away

more than a bloody nose from someone even on the spectrum. Bullying takes away the

things that are the most difficult to get back. Things that can shape the way a person

views themselves, who they allow in their life and the choices they make for a life time.

According to Janet of University of Manila, thousands of young people are targets of

depression or school absenteeism. Working with kids to create ways to address these

issues is an important responsibility for adults. For example, adults can help those who

are targets of bullying explore ways to respond assertively, and they can help those who

carry out hurtful behaviors get support for addressing what’s underneath their actions.

Adults can also assist young people in identifying strategies to use as bystanders who

witness these behaviors.

METHODOLOGY

This chapter will give a discussion of the different methods and procedures that

will be used in the study; this chapter will give the description of the research design, it

will then feature the process of data collection and how the data will be analyzed.

The researchers will be used questionnaires to gather information or data from the

respondents. The researchers used descriptive method to know the effects and prevention

of cyber bullying. The survey questionnaire will be given to 50 random students. The

instrument in data gathering in this research is survey questionnaires. The survey

questionnaires answer the problems for this research. The questionnaires will be the one

that the researchers will use to measure the effects and possible solution or prevention in

Cyber bullying.
 CHAPTER IV

DISCUSSION OF DATA

The data for this research will be collected using a survey questionnaire. The

survey will be created using suitable questions modified from related research and

individual questions formed by the researcher. The survey will be composed of 10

questions, which will be related to the participant’s perception regarding the effects and

prevention of cyber bullying. After we collect all the survey questionnaires from the 50

students, the data will be analyzed by the researchers to know the students’ opinions

about the effects and prevention of cyber bullying.

CONCLUSION

Based on the researcher's findings, the following conclusions will be given and

concluded:

1. Students will always active on social media and plenty of them already

experienced cyber bullying.

2. Many victims will reported the incident but they only told it to their friends

which they think is more comfortable than reporting it to their parents.

3. While many students will be victimized by the bullies, some students are also

the ones who's bullying others by posting lies, saying bad things online, threatening or

teasing others and using someone else's account.

4. Most of the victims will be shared one opinion on what they think is the effect

of cyber bullying and for them it is being traumatized from what they have experienced

from being bullied.

5. The possible way to prevent the cyber bullying incidents is will be attending a

seminar regarding bullying and if someone had already experienced it, try to go to a

counseling session where he/she will feel more comfortable to prevent being traumatized

of the incident.

CHAPTER VI

RECOMMENDATION
 From the findings of the study will be based on the conclusion will be drawn the

following:

1. If you're always active on social media and posts something, be careful of what

your posts are. It can be the cause of cyber bullying. The bully might take advantage of

what you have posted and make stories that not even true or the bully may say bad things

about your post which can hurt your feelings.

2. Whether you post or comment on someone's post, always remember to think

first before you click. Your comment might offend others by misinterpreting your words

or they may misunderstand your point and that may lead to an argument.

3. If somebody have an argument with you, don't say your opinion publicly

because others might join the argument and it'll just be huge without you both noticing. If

you want him/her to hear your point, you can talk or chat privately so that you both can

focus on your point of view, let each other’s take turns on your own explanations and be

peaceful as you go with your conversation.

4. If you happen to see a bullying incident on social media or if you experience it

with the use of your account, you can report it on their site or you can also block the

bully's account while you wait for the response of your report.

5. If you already experienced cyber bullying and been traumatized of the incident,

it'll be wise if you try to not be on social media for a while and go on a counselling

session. After that, you can be back again with your normal life which you can be active

again on social media and forget what happened. Just be careful and if another bully

happens to bully you, just ignore it. Focus on the positive side of social media and have

more positive outlook in your life.

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