Großbritannien: Erneut Selbstmord wegen Cyber-Mobbing

Frank Patalong

Spiegel Online

German

English

Cyberbullying

Web Article

Everyone interested.

1 - 20 pages

The article " Großbritannien: Erneut Selbstmord wegen Cyber-Mobbing " by Frank Patalong published on 21.09.2009 on the website "Spiegel Online" mainly focuses on the problem of cyber bullying and especially on its consequences. In the UK, there were three girls in the past two years who committed suicide because they saw no other way to escape the online terror. The article presents the case of the 15-year-old girl Holly Grogan who was bullied on online networks like Facebook and MySpace, and who finally could not stand the pressure anymore and jumped off a bridge. Cyber-bullying is now being taken seriously as a growing problem since current estimates show that 30 to 40% of all adolescents have already experienced any forms of cyber-bullying on the Internet. Cyber-bullying is mostly perceived as more threatening and humiliating than traditional forms of bullying because young people are almost always available online and because the bullying takes place on a universally accessible platform so that, in principle, everyone could participate. The fact that this is a widespread problem can be proved by looking at the number of incidents that happened in the past: In July 2009, the 15-year-old Megan Gillan killed herself with a drug overdose, in the summer of 2008, the 13-year-old Sam Leeson, who also was bullied for several months, hung himself. In January 2008, a 16-year-old boy survived his suicide attempt; the perpetrator in this case was sentenced to pay damages and should also be taken under the observation of a youth services project for twelve months. At last, the famous case of the US-American Megan Meier is mentioned. The young girl killed herself in October 2006 because she was being bullied by a former girlfriend and the girlfriend’s mother. This case led to a tightening of laws in the U.S. and also to new law proposals.

We chose the article " Großbritannien: Erneut Selbstmord wegen Cyber-Mobbing " by Frank Patalong published on 21.09.2009 on the website "Spiegel Online" because it shows the alarming proportions cyber bullying already assumes and it also shows the terrible consequences this psychological terror can have, especially on young people. The article clarifies that the phenomenon of cyber bullying is a very serious problem that strongly affects young people so that they often see no other way out of this misery than to commit suicide. There are some cases presented that show exactly this, namely that young people took their own lives as a result of this online terror. This already implies that in addition to a lack of laws, our society also lacks of agencies or persons of trust to whom young people could turn in cases of cyber bullying.

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,650340,00.html

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