The Pros And Cons Of Cyber Harassment

Every day, billions of people use the Internet for many things like sharing ideas, making financial transactions, and staying in contact with family members, friends, and even colleagues. Throughout the last decade or so, technology has evolved more and more becoming a major part in most people’s lives allowing them to alter the ways in which people all communicate with each other. Nowadays, people prefer to speak through e-mails, through text messages, and through social media instead of face to face because it is much easier and faster to pass messages. Aside all of this greatness, most don’t sit and think that with every privilege sometimes comes with a consequence, and most don’t take in mind that every move they make online is being monitored …show more content…
The term cyber harassment is normally used when adults are involved” (NoBullying.com, 2015, para. 2). Cyber harassment happens in many ways, unsolicited posts and comments on social media sites, emails, texts, graphic images and posts directed at the victim, and instant messaging as well. Other different types of cyber harassment are; hate speech, sexual or pornographic content, self-harm, identity theft, intellectual property theft, and lastly cyberbullying (Nobullying.com, 2015, para. 4)
Cyber harassment and stalking rates have increased in the last decade and has had many negative effects on cyber victims. Back in 2005, NCH reported that 14% of 11-19 year olds had been threatened or harassed using text messaging (NCH, 2005, p.2) and O’Connell finding that 20% of children aged 9–16 had been harassed within an online chatroom (O’Connell, 2004, p.4). Since then, cybercrimes have continued to escalate almost triple the amount from almost a decade ago. More than one million women and 370,000 men are stalked annually in the United States which means that one in twelve women and one in forty-five men will be stalked in their lifetimes (Moore, 2006). The average …show more content…
“As of 2012, teen social media users are sharing more personal information in their profiles. Older teen social media users (14-17) more frequently share certain types of information on their profiles than younger teen social media users (12-13). Photos of themselves (94% vs. 82% of young teens), their school name (76% vs. 56% of young teens), their relationship status (66% vs. 50% of young teens), their cell phone number (23% vs. 11% of young teens)” (Duggan, 2014). People in general have become way too uncaring for their safety not knowing what reality can bring them at the click of a