Introduction
High school is one of the most critical educational time frames that play a vital role in helping the society to achieve and reflect American ideals and culture. It provides the foundation for the social, economic, and political systems of the country, as well as the impetus for its technological superiority and scientific progress. As a result, it is expected that all Americans should successfully complete secondary education. Successful completion of high school education depends on many factors, some from the society, others from within the individuals, and others from the school environment itself. Unfortunately, while studying in high school, cyberbullying was a common phenomenon that most students had to endure great pain. Bullying is not a new phenomenon in American high school; however, the current surge in the use of the internet of things has led to the rise of cyberbullying as a new harmful practice that had negative impacts on our studies. According to a study conducted by the Cyberbullying Research Center, approximately 34% of middle and high school students were cyberbullied in 2012 (Shariff 34). The victims of high school cyberbullying are negatively affected, leading to many problems such as the decline in their academic performance, among other impacts. Indeed in the modern era of advanced technology, cyberbullying is a major problem in affecting students in high schools that must be addressed for this level of education to achieve its primary goals in the country.
Cyberbullying is the use of information and communication technologies such as instant messaging, cell phones, e-mails, personal Web sites, and social media to support any intentional, repeated, and antagonistic behavior by a person or a group of people to harm others. Cyberbullying takes many different forms, including cyberstalking, flaming, and harassment, among others. Flaming is defined at the sending of rude, vulgar, or angry messages to a person, either privately or via an online group platform. Harassment is the act of repeatedly sending offensive messages to a person while cyberstalking is the use of an online platform to intimidate a person or giving threats to harm. Other most common forms of cyberbullying that are common in society, and particularly in high schools, are; masquerade, exclusion, and outing and trickery. Masquerade is the act of pretending to someone else and posting or sending content places that person in potential danger or make him/her look bad (Weber and Pelfrey 35). Outing and trickery, on the other hand, involve posting or sending material about another person that contain embarrassing, private, and sensitive information such as forwarding individual images or messages. Cyberbullying can be related to religious, racial, and cultural biases.
Cyberbullying has devastating impacts on high school students and their families. The psychological harm is evident through school failure, low self-esteem, anxiety, anger, school violence, school avoidance, depression, and even suicide. Since cyberbullying, the victims do not have a place to escape; the damage tends to be more severe than in the case of traditional physical bullying. Besides, it is possible to preserve harmful material for use in the future. Since it is difficult, if not impossible, to identify the perpetrator of cyberbullying, most bullies prefer to use this method because they may not be punished (Weber and Pelfrey 36). As a result, in high schools, cyberbullying is a tool of choice among students who cannot harass others physically. Besides, similar to physical bullying, the physically stronger students are less likely to be either bullies or victims of cyberbullying. This phenomenon explains why girls are more likely to be victims as well as perpetrators of cyberbullying than boys.
The increased innovation and adoption of technology can help high schools to meet their goals since students have access to more learning resources. The technology has, however, lead to a decline in performance among students who have been victims of bullying supported by the technological infrastructure. The poor academic performance because of cyberbullying is mostly attributed to the fact that the practice affects student’s emotions and emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the ability of individuals to monitor their emotions and those of others, discriminate among them and use the resulting information to guide their thinking and actions. It also defined as the ability to reason about emotions and using these emotions to improve thinking (Weber and Pelfrey 38). Cyberbullying often damages the emotions of students, thus hampering their ability to think clearly.
Consequences
Cyberbullying has many emotion-related consequences among students, such as anxiety, depression, and negative social perspectives about themselves. Victims of cyberbullying often have a feeling of madness, frustrations, or distress. To address their distress, students engage in self-destructive behaviors such as violence and different forms of social deviance such as drug abuse and inappropriate sexual behaviors. When students engage themselves in such practices, they barely focus on their academics, leading to a decline in their performance (Shariff 34). There have been cases, however, when the victims have committed suicide because they could not cope with the distress associated with cyberbullying.
In many educational systems, high school education is critical in determining people's level of success in the future. It is, therefore, important that every student has ample time to focus on their high school studies than in other levels of their education. Besides, high schools should provide a conducive environment that shapes students to be productive, law-abiding, and morally upright members of society. Cyberbullying, however, has a contrary impact on student’s behavior. Some students drop out of high school because of cyberbullying, while others engage in criminal activities because of poor judgments as a result of impaired emotional intelligence. In the U.S, 90% of high school students complete their studies, while a 10% drop out because of different reasons (Weber and Pelfrey 34). The majority of those who drop out, however, often do so because they exhibit behavioral problems. To such students, any small instance of cyberbullying can have a significant negative impact on their motivation to continue pursuing their education in high school.
Due to the adverse consequences of cyberbullying in high schools, it is crucial to come up with measures to prevent further occurrences. The first step to end cyber bullying is to raise awareness about the existence of cyberbullying in high schools. The school community, including the administrators, teachers, students, and subordinate staff, should conduct a meeting to deliberate on matters concerning cyberbullying. Specialized experts on education, law, and psychology should be invited to deliver speeches about the damages caused by online bullying. The meeting is important because some students may be suffering because they do not know that their offenders can be punished because their behavior is criminal (Shariff 35). At the same time, others may be engaging in online activities for fun without knowing that they are hurting others. By conducting frequent meetings, schools encourage students to avoid online bullying.
Apart from creating awareness in high schools about cyberbullying, it is also essential to create a safe atmosphere. The safe atmosphere in schools can be achieved by assuring students that those reporting cases of cyberbullying will be respected and protected. They encourage students to report cyberbullying; it is important to ensure them they are protected against any retaliation, and any cases will be taken seriously. Each student is entitled to receiving one-on-one help, intervention, and advice that are unique to his/her situation. Besides, when students believe that school takes issues of cyberbullying more seriously, they are less likely to harass others using online platforms. The school can also establish other communication strategies which allow a student who reports the cyberbullying to be anonymous. Schools can let the identity of the student to be hidden by installing an anonymous box for students to drop letters (Weber and Pelfrey 34). Additionally, the schools can also establish a hotline for receiving complaints about cyberbullying from students.
Since cyberbullying is a dangerous phenomenon that affects the ability of the school to achieve its objectives, it is vital to ensure that establish firm policies on matters concerning online harassment. Schools and government policies regarding ethics, and offense in the use of technology should be explicitly taught, rather than assumed. High school students are mature enough to understand the consequences of breaking both national and school policies. Such policies are critical because they create clear boundaries on the use of online platforms. Polices are effective in curtailing online aggression by categorizing them as unacceptable behaviors.
Since cyberbullying takes place in the broader environmental context that goes beyond schools, it is crucial to involve the broader community in addressing the problem. Parents are the most effective stakeholders in the schools since they influence the way students use the online platform. Parents can intervene in their children's online activities by supervising, guiding, advising, and protecting them (Shariff 20). Educators might notify parents to buy special phones or filtering software to help protect their children from online harassment.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it is evident that cyberbullying is a serious problem affecting high school education. The increase in the innovation and use of technology has led to the rise of cyberbullying among high school students. This new type of bullying takes place on online platforms where their fellow students harass victims. As a result, the victims are psychologically disturbed, leading to a decline in their academic performance. The solution to the problem of online harassment includes increasing awareness about the issue at school, creating policies about cyberbullying, as well as incorporating parents in the prevention measures.
