Trolling and Cyber-bullying (Reading10-lgrazios)

Based on the readings Trolling is when people who have nothing better to do go online and start harassing other people on line just for the fun of it. From what I could understand it is like cyber-bullying but the people who are trolls, usually are strangers to the people they troll. As a consequence of this they tend to disassociate the consequences of their trolls and fail to see that there is another living and feeling person on the other side of the troll, like what happened to Lindy West. Usually the people who troll are just bored or want to feel better about them, and their target barely sees their messages and comments. That is how this is different from cyber-bullying because cyber-bullying is on a more personal level, I feel, which in part makes it worse. Cyber-bullying is very different form regular bullying because when you are bullied normally, you can usually just go home and you’ll be safe from the harassment, but if you are being cyber-bullied you can go home and the messages will still keep coming, therefore making it a persistent and unavoidable thing. Personally I believe cyber-bullying is a major issue online.  I think what makes it such a big issue is that the kids that do it don’t really understand how bad what they’re doing is. For kids, doing this is just funny and they don’t really think of the possible consequences from doing what they do. This doesn’t make it right, but they do it for the attention and peer pressure. And there are several types of kids who get bullied, people who can deal with it and people who actually struggle with it and can’t cope. The worst part of this is that the majority of kids who can’t cope with it can’t/won’t come forward and tell someone they are a victim. This is in part because they feel like they can deal with and end up being overwhelmed and/or they are ashamed. So I feel children should be protected, and it is up to their parents, both of bullies and victims, parents should be involved in their children’s lives to be able to recognize what kind of children they are. If some one is a bullies parent they should pay more attention to their kid and talk to them and guide him in the right direction. And if you are a victim’s parent you have to know that your child is being victimized and help him/her get through it by being there and being supportive.