Confidence

What to do if You Are Being Cyber Bullied

Being bullied is a stressful experience, and the situation may become even more severe when it transfers online. Adults, not simply children and adolescents in high school, can be the targets of bullying behavior in the form of cyberbullying. If you are being bullied online, you are in luck because there are additional actions you can take to protect yourself. It is easy to talk yourself out of going to law enforcement, especially if you do not know who the person is or if they live in a different state than you do. Every state handles cyberbullying and stalking differently, and it is easy to persuade yourself out of going to law police. If you are being physically threatened or if you know the person who is harassing you online, you should contact the authorities in your area as soon as possible and inquire about the legal alternatives that are available to you.

 

Reporting bullies on social networks like Facebook or Twitter does not always result in the bully being banned from the site so you need to take steps to look after yourself. It is a good idea to look at the different social media networks – signal vs telegram vs whatsapp for example. 

 

When bullies are blocked or their accounts are terminated, they may often simply establish new accounts to continue harassing you. This leaves you in a never-ending game of avoiding them.  It is enough to send someone over the edge. Don’t remain silent about what is taking place; this is probably the single most crucial thing to bear in mind. You do not have to go through this ordeal on your own, so make sure you let your close friends or someone else you can rely on know what is going on.

Let’s take a look at some of the steps you can take.

 

Keep records of everything

It is only normal to desire to delete or otherwise get rid of an insulting or cruel communication sent by a bully as soon as you see it. However, you can get to that at a later time. First and foremost, be sure to screen capture anything that is going on, especially if it is occurring on a social network where the bully has the ability to remove their message if they are afraid of being exposed. If you are being bullied by email, you should either print out the messages or save them in a separate folder. If something were to go wrong, having recordings of everything would be quite helpful.

 

Report and block

After you have made copies of their messages, you should report the account to the social network and then block the user in question.  It is possible that if you block a bully, you will only serve to incite them further; therefore, you should not be surprised if you find that another account is tormenting you in exactly the same manner as before. Continue to block and report it even if you believe you can just ignore it for the time being. In the event that things spiral out of control in the future, you are going to want to be able to demonstrate that you were taking action to stop your bully.

 

Involve law enforcement

State laws and policies regarding cyberbullying vary greatly from one another. If the harassment is continuing and there are threats of physical violence, you should go to the police as soon as possible with the stack of harassing messages you have received on Facebook and hand it over to them. They might be able to call the bully’s internet service provider or, at the least, find the bully’s IP address, but this depends on the laws in the area.

 

Don’t engage with the bully

It is natural to feel the need to want to protect yourself and argue with the person who is bullying you. That is one thing that you absolutely must not do. Bullies get their kicks out of attempting to make you feel like you have no control over your situation, and when you fight back against them, you demonstrate that they have touched a raw spot in you. It may be difficult, but you should not respond in any way to any message involving bullying. They will not be ignored if you just do not respond to them. Engage in activities of a different kind: Take a screenshot, report the activity, and block it. That should become your new motto.

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