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19 Cases of Bullying among Real and Overwhelming Youth

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Last Updated on April 13, 2023 by Mike Robinson

We present 19 cases of real bullying and cyberbullying characterized by their fatal outcomes and the lack of training of education professionals.  The cases and stories of bullying in schools and outside them with cyberbullying have multiplied in recent years.

Bullying can cause severe mental distress. The cases of adolescents and minors who take their own lives due to the different types of bullying should be alarming to educational professionals. Schools must implement immediate and decisive actions to curtail this unacceptable behavior trend. 

1-Miriam, eight years old

Miriam is an eight-year-old girl who goes to elementary school. She loves animals, so she always has pictures of them in her books. She even has a backpack shaped like a puppy.

Her companions laugh and make fun of her, comparing her with the animals on the stickers on her backpack because she is overweight. Also, since she is “fat,” they take her money and snacks at recess.

Although she has told the teachers repeatedly, they have not done much to change the situation. To try to improve the situation, Miriam stopped eating and is in the hospital for anorexia.

2-Tania: Fourteen years old.

Tania, a 14-year-old teenager, has tried to commit suicide due to her high school classmates’ continuous threats, robberies, and aggressions. The situation has not changed despite filing 20 complaints against 19 of her classmates.

In January 2014, she was admitted to the hospital for 15 days due to an overdose of Valium pills. Despite her attempted suicide, the threats are still ongoing.

3-Diego: Eleven years old

It is a recent case of school bullying in Spain; Diego, an eleven-year-old boy, was a victim of this practice in a school in Madrid.

His mother remembers that her son told her he did not want to go to school, so his mood was always very sad; once, he lost his voice because of a blow he had suffered at school from his classmates.

The day he committed suicide, his mother went to pick him up at school, and he ran frantically to the car to get out safely. Later that evening, he killed himself.

4-Jokin Z: Fourteen years old

It was one of the first cases of bullying that came to light in Spain. After being bullied for months, he decided to commit suicide. The parents felt helpless. They tried for two years to prevent this tragedy and remove the suffering of their teenage son.

As a result of his suicide, eight students had charges brought against them. The parents were also arrested. However, only one individual was convicted. 

5-Jairo: Sixteen years old

Jairo is a 16-year-old boy from a town in Seville who faced severe bullying because of his physical disability. He has a prosthetic leg due to a wrong operation. His classmates continually make fun of him and his disability.

Not only did they trip him, but they also tried to take it off in the gymnastics class. On the other hand, in the social networks, there were photos of him manipulated with computer programs with bad words that made Jairo not want to go to school.

Due to the suffering caused by this type of behavior, Jairo asked to change schools and is currently at another institute.

6-Yaiza: Seven years old

At seven years old, Yaiza suffered bullying from her classmates. They insulted her continuously, to the point that Yaiza had difficulty convincing herself that what her classmates told her was false.  Not only did they insult her, but they also stole her breakfast and even once threw a table at her.

She was fortunate to have a teacher who was involved in the issue of bullying and helped make changes at the school. The teacher brought attention to bullying to better understand why these practices occur in schools.

7-Alan: Seventeen years old

This seventeen-year-old teenager was bullied by his classmates because he was a transsexual. He took his life on December 30, 2015, after taking pills mixed with alcohol.

It was not the first time he tried since he had been receiving therapy numerous times because he had suffered for years. As in other cases, Alan was no longer in school, but that was not enough.

8-Ryan: Fourteen years old

After years of psychological aggression, in 2003, Ryan, then fourteen years old, decided to commit suicide. He did so because he was supposedly gay. It all started because a friend of his published online that he was homosexual.

Because of this, he did not stop receiving jokes, ridicule, and humiliation from his classmates. This case helped to approve the Harassment Prevention Act in Vermont of the US States months after his death.

9-Arancha: Sixteen years old

This 16-year-old girl decided to throw herself from the sixth floor. The reason was the bullying she suffered from classmates in Madrid.

Arancha suffered from motor and intellectual disabilities, which was more than enough for her class to bully her. Although her parents reported this fact to the police, it was not enough to prevent the fatal outcome.

Minutes before launching herself from the building, she said goodbye to the people closest to her by sending them a message through WhatsApp, saying, “I was tired of living.”

10-Lolita: Fifteen years old

Lolita is currently under medical treatment due to the depression she suffers, which has paralyzed her face. This young woman from Maip, Chile, was bullied by four classmates at her school.

Her classmates mocked and humiliated her in class, which seriously affected her. According to the mother, the school knew about her daughter’s mistreatment and did nothing to prevent it.

11-Rebecca: Fifteen years

The case of Rebecca from the state of Florida is an example of cyberbullying. She decided to take her own life in 2013 due to the continuous threats and humiliations suffered by colleagues on social networks.

She and her mother had informed the teachers at school of this situation. Unfortunately, they did not work to stop the attacks on her. She posted on her profile days before her death, “I’m dead. “I cannot stand it anymore.”

12-Phoebe Prince: Fifteen years old

This 15-year-old Irish immigrant girl was harassed by nine teenagers who had criminal charges brought up in 2010. She was bullied physically and psychologically, and there was cyberbullying through cell phones and the internet.

Phoebe was humiliated and assaulted for three months in high school until she ended up hanging herself. The people who harassed her continued to do so even after her death.

13-Rehtaeh: Fifteen years old

This girl from Halifax, Nova Scotia, decided to hang herself in her bathroom after suffering cyber bullying. Her schoolmates and strangers took part in the bullying. Rehtaeh got drunk at a party, where, apart from raping her, they photographed her while it happened.

This photo began circulating everywhere, so even kids she did not know asked her to sleep with them on social networks. Her classmates also insulted her and made fun of her.

14-Oscar: Thirteen years old

This minor, who is 13 years old and in the first year of secondary school, decided to ingest liquid drain cleaner for pipes for the sole purpose of not going to school. Oscar was harassed not only by his classmates but also by one of his teachers.

Oscar could not contain the urge to go to the bathroom due to a urinary problem. His teacher never let him go, so he once urinated on himself.  From that moment on, he had to deal with the treatment he received from his teacher and his classmates, who made fun of him and insulted him repeatedly.

15-Monica: Sixteen years old

Mónica lived in Ciudad Real (Spain) and was 16 years old when she decided to commit suicide because of the treatment she received at school from her classmates. They would insult her on the bus, threaten her, and publish photos and nasty comments on social networks.

She decided to commit suicide to end all the hell that her classmates made her go through. Even though her father, one day before he took his own life, complained to the head of studies about what was happening to his daughter.

16-María: Eleven years old

This girl from Madrid (Spain) suffered harassment from her classmates at a religious school. Her classmates not only made fun of her but even physically mistreated her.

Teachers disputed these claims and did not defend her or take measures to stop them from happening. Because of this, she tried to overdose on pills without success.

17-Amanda: Fifteen years old

Amanda, a Canadian-born minor, committed suicide after posting a video on social media reporting that she was suffering bullying.

It all started when he sent a topless photo of herself to a stranger on the webcam; from that moment, insults and harassment began on the internet.

This bullying lasted three years. Amanda even changed schools to rebuild her life, but it did not help. The abuse caused anxiety and acute depression that led her to consume drugs.

18-Zaira: Fifteen years old

Here is another victim of bullying from classmates. In the case of Zaira, it all started when they recorded her with a cell phone while she was in the bathroom.  These girls spread the video among all the school’s classmates and others outside her school. 

Because of these recordings, Zaira had to take the continuous teasing of her classmates and even physical abuse. Thanks to a lower-class classmate, she faced bullying, and this story had a happy ending.

19-Marco: Eleven years

This child had spent five years enduring the harassment he suffered from his classmates. They made fun of him because he was supposedly overweight, although, in reality, he was not.

They humiliated him on many occasions, and once, they even took off his clothes in gym class.  A teacher knew what was happening to him and did not take action. Marco is currently in another school after telling him everything that happened to his parents.

Conclusions About Bullying

These 19 cases are only 19 of many in our schools. These examples show the flaws that exist in education systems worldwide. The education system professionals are not doing enough to address these abuses.

Despite all we know about bullying, there still needs to be more information about its prevention and action. The schools are not prepared to face this type of situation, leading them to ignore this behavior in their students and leave the families alone with this problem.

Also Read:  11 Human Body Games for Children

To reduce the number of suicides due to school bullying in children, we must educate everyone involved. By providing adequate training, people will know what guidelines to follow in these situations to prevent adolescent suicide.

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Bullying, Interrupted

• Posted August 30, 2021
• By Gianna Cacciatore
• Counseling and Mental Health
• Disruption and Crises
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• Online Education

The COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and forced students into online education, causing widespread worry among parents and educators that an increase in cyberbullying would follow. But that increase never materialized, reports a new study by Andrew Bacher-Hicks , Ed.M.’14, assistant professor of education at Boston University, and co-authors Joshua Goodman , Jennifer Greif Green , and Melissa Holt . In fact, bullying and cyberbullying rates, measured by the frequency of online searches for bullying-related terms, actually dropped during the pandemic. We caught up with Bacher-Hicks to learn why. 

We wanted to look into bullying during COVID in particular because, after the massive shift from in-person instruction to online learning in March of 2020, there was a lot of concern that cyberbullying might increase (since students were spending more time online). We wanted to see if that increase had indeed come to pass. 

How did the study work?

We used Google search trends in this study, for two purposes: First, we looked at historical Google search trend data from before the pandemic to figure out whether or not Google search trends for words like “bullying” or “cyberbullying” actually predict bullying behavior. Linking historical search popularity for those terms with survey responses from the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey , we provided clear evidence that increases in internet searches for bullying historically predicted higher reported rates of bullying. 

Then, we tracked Google searches for “bullying” and “cyberbullying” during the periods directly before and after schools closed in March 2020. We also tracked search frequency during the summer of 2020 and into the fall of the 2020–21 school year. 

What did you find? 

The main result was that both bullying and cyberbullying searches dropped dramatically (by 30 to 40%) in months immediately following school closures. We also found that, for schools that remained remote in the fall of 2020, decreases in both in-person bullying and cyberbullying persisted. 

When we looked at schools that remained fully remote versus schools that offered in-person instruction for the 2020–2021 school year, we found that the drops in bullying were concentrated among schools that remained fully remote. This is consistent with the idea that shifting to remote schooling was an important mechanism that drove down the rates of both bullying and cyberbullying. 

Interestingly, even in schools that shifted back to in-person instruction, we found that in-person bullying and cyberbullying did not fully return to pre-pandemic levels. 

Why do you think that is? 

There were likely some differences between the fall of 2020 and past falls. For schools that returned to some in-person instruction in the fall of 2020, bullying rates may have been lower than historical patterns because those schools had lower rates of in-person attendance. Just because a school offered in-person instruction doesn’t mean all students accepted it.  

Another possible reason is that even if everybody did return for in-person learning, there were additional structures in place. Prior literature has found that bullying tends to happen during unstructured time — when students are passing in the hallways, at recess, during lunchtime. With COVID precautions, in-person schools had less unstructured time, meaning there may have been fewer opportunities for in-person bullying to occur. 

What about cyberbullying rates? Why might those have initially dropped and, in schools that returned to in-person learning, remained lower?

This gets into one of the most surprising results of this study. It was not surprising to me or my co-authors that in-person bullying dropped, but it was surprising to us that cyberbullying dropped. 

Our study didn’t examine this question directly, but it might be the case that there is a link between in-school interactions and online interactions. Prior research shows that the same individuals are often involved both in cyberbullying and in-person bullying. Some instances of bullying, therefore, may start in person and then shift online. If these in person interactions are disrupted, then the spillover onto online bullying may also be disrupted. 

What do these findings mean for educators and families? 

They suggest a few things. The first is that we, as families, educators, and policymakers, do not have to accept high rates of bullying. The pandemic has shown us that bullying rates can change quite dramatically. Second, this research suggests that we may be able to identify effective strategies implemented during pandemic to decrease bullying rates in the future. For example, school leaders might think carefully about unstructured time in a school day, how those student interactions have differed during the pandemic, and if any of the additional structure introduced during the pandemic would be useful to offer moving forward.

Finally, I think a lot of research on the educational effects of COVID-19 has focused on negative consequences — things like learning loss, student achievement, and anxiety. It’s certainly crucial that we document these harmful effects, but this study suggests that there are at least some aspects of students’ learning experiences that may have improved. Highlighting the decrease in pandemic-era bullying allows us to see the shift to remote as not entirely harmful. This is important to remember, as there might be other benefits we can learn about from the shift. 

The latest research, perspectives, and highlights from the Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Snezana’s story: from being bullied to ending conflicts at school, peer mediators in kosovo (scr 1244) help keep school safe for everyone.

MITROVICA, Kosovo (SCR 1244), 6 September, 2018 - Sixteen-year-old Snezana Dzogovic vividly remembers when her classmates started to bully her. She was in sixth grade at her school in Mitrovica, northern Kosovo (SCR 1244).

“I went ‘into’ myself and did not talk to anyone about it.  I started avoiding school.  My grades fell because I did not go to school. I could not study at home,” she says.

Snezana says the bullying started when she began listening to rock music and dressing differently than the other girls. She liked bands like Nirvana and Guns n’ Roses and she cut her hair short.

Verbal and physical abuse followed. Her classmates would damage her belongings when she wasn’t looking.

One day Snezana came home with her backpack and books ripped and her mother asked her what had happened.

“When I started to talk, my mother felt shocked and embarrassed that I had not shared it before. My mother went to school and spoke to the class teacher, but she (the teacher) avoided resolving the issue,” says Snezana.

Violence, an everyday lesson for millions

According to a new report released by UNICEF today, Violence in Schools: An Everyday Lesson , peer violence, defined as the number of children who report having been bullied in the last month or having been involved in a physical fight in the last year – is a pervasive part of young people’s education around the world.

The report finds that approximately half of all students aged 13 to 15 – 150 million girls and boys – experience peer-violence. This violence exists in every region of the world and in every community.

The report explains that the effects of peer to peer violence are unacceptably high on individual young people as well as society as a whole. Violence decreases self-esteem, reduces attendance, lowers grades and leads many children to drop out of school completely.

From being bullied to mediating conflicts

Snezana explains that during the time she was being bullied, a new group of peer mediators were brought into her school. She had never heard about the group and was admittedly skeptical.

“At first I did not feel comfortable.  I thought it was yet another group that would bully me,” she said.

But this group was different.

The group is organized by UNICEF and partner organization in Kosovo (SCR 1244) DOMOVIK as part of a school-based violence prevention programme. The peer mediators are student volunteers who are trained to resolve conflict at school – often cases of bullying and psychological abuse. They are also trained to refer more serious cases of violence to appropriate officials, including social welfare authorities and the police.

The peer mediators work with school administrators, teachers, the student council as well as psychologists and education specialists.

Snezana decided to join the group. During the first year of being a peer mediator the bullying she was experiencing stopped. She also brought positive changes into other student’s lives. 

“When I joined, I found it to be a wonderful group and started to work on myself,” she says.  “I now put in extra effort when I see a child being bullied, and also suggest the child to join the peer mediation team.”

Over the last five years Snezana has helped end approximately 50 school-based conflicts or cases of bullying. She recalls one particular instance when she convinced two boys who had been fighting that physical conflict would not help.  She explains that she approached the situation as a friend, wanting to listen to both of the boys. 

“That is how it was resolved,” she says.

Another important part of Snezana and the other peer mediator’s work is visiting neighbouring schools and re-enacting cases of bullying. During the reenactments, students learn how to identify bullying and resolve conflict. 

So far, the peer mediation programme has benefitted at least 15,000 students in Kosovo (SCR 1244).

Snezana will never forget the pain of being targeted by bullies, but she says she has moved on.

“I decided to let them know that I was equal to them,” she says about the kids who used to bully her.  “At the end of the day I forgive them because they were children.”

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A case study with an identified bully: policy and practice implications

Affiliation.

• 1 Georgia State University, Counseling and Psychological Services, Atlanta, GA.
• PMID: 21731789
• PMCID: PMC3117608

Objective: Bullying is a serious public health problem that may include verbal or physical injury as well as social isolation or exclusion. As a result, research is needed to establish a database for policies and interventions designed to prevent bullying and its negative effects. This paper presents a case study that contributes to the literature by describing an intervention for bullies that has implications for practice and related policies regarding bullying.

Methods: An individualized intervention for an identified bully was implemented using the Participatory Culture-Specific Intervention Model (PCSIM; Nastasi, Moore, & Varjas, 2004) with a seventh-grade middle school student. Ecological and culture-specific perspectives were used to develop and implement the intervention that included psychoeducational sessions with the student and consultation with the parent and school personnel. A mixed methods intervention design was used with the following informants: the target student, the mother of the student, a teacher and the school counselor. Qualitative data included semi-structured interviews with the parent, teacher and student, narrative classroom observations and evaluation/feedback forms filled out by the student and interventionist. Quantitative data included the following quantitative surveys (i.e., Child Self Report Post Traumatic Stress Reaction Index and the Behavior Assessment Scale for Children). Both qualitative and quantitative data were used to evaluate the acceptability, integrity and efficacy of this intervention.

Results: The process of intervention design, implementation and evaluation are described through an illustrative case study. Qualitative and quantitative findings indicated a decrease in internalizing, externalizing and bullying behaviors as reported by the teacher and the mother, and a high degree of acceptability and treatment integrity as reported by multiple stakeholders.

Conclusion: This case study makes important contributions by describing an intervention that is targeted to specific needs of the bully by designing culture specific interventions and working with the student's unique environmental contexts. Contributions also are made by illustrating the use of mixed methods to document acceptability, integrity and efficacy of an intervention with documented positive effects in these areas. In addition, implications for policy and practice related to the treatment of students identified as bullies and future research needs are discussed.

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Family of bullied teen who died after student punched him reaches historic $27 million settlement, lawyers say

The family of a 13-year-old boy who died after two of his classmates attacked him at lunch will receive a $27 million settlement from a Southern California school district, according to the family's attorneys, who said it is the largest school bullying settlement in U.S. history.

Juana and Felipe Salcedo, the guardians of Diego Stolz, sued the Moreno Valley Unified School District after he died in September 2019, claiming officials ignored several complaints they made in 2018 and 2019 to administrators at Landmark Middle School that Diego was being bullied. They became his guardians after both of his parents died.

The case was settled Wednesday.

"This lawsuit has put schools on notice to find ways to effectively deal with bullying and to enact real anti-bullying policies," attorney Neil Gehlawat said in a statement . "Although his family’s grief can never be taken away, we believe real change will come and there will be a renewed focus on anti-bullying programs across the nation."

A district spokesperson had no comment for the media.

Diego died nine days after a student sucker-punched him at lunch, attorneys Gehlawat and Dave Ring said in a news release . He fell and hit his head on a concrete pillar. Another student punched him in the face while he was on the ground, they said.

Cellphone video released by the attorneys showed Diego standing with his hands at his side. The family's attorneys said that was a "clear indication that he did not want to fight, and would not escalate the situation." A boy is seen in the video swinging at Diego. A second boy also swings and punches him in the head, causing him to fall. The first boy then rushes toward Diego and hits him again, the video shows.

Diego was rushed to a hospital for a traumatic brain injury and placed on life support, the attorneys said. He never regained consciousness, and he died Sept. 25, 2019.

The two teenagers involved, who were 14 at the time, entered the equivalent of guilty pleas in juvenile court to involuntary manslaughter and assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, The Associated Press reported. They spent 47 days in juvenile custody and were ordered to undergo anger management therapy.

Diego’s guardians say the fatal encounter wasn't the first time he had been bullied. On Sept. 12, 2019, he went to his science teacher for help after he was sucker-punched in the head, the news release says.

"The teacher informed the Assistant Principal that day; she claimed she would review the security footage to find the perpetrators, but she did not," the family's attorneys said.

The next day, the Salcedos' adult daughter went with Diego to speak with the assistant principal. The assistant principal told her that she knew who the alleged bullies were and that the students would be suspended, according to the news release. The assistant principal also said she would switch around class schedules so Diego would not have classes with the bullies, but she never did, the attorneys said.

The family alleged in the lawsuit that the district has "a long history" of failing to protect students who are being bullied. They also said the district failed to enact effective safety procedures to protect the students.

School district Superintendent Martinrex Kedziora said in a letter to parents Wednesday that the district has made several changes regarding anti-bullying since Diego's death. Some of the changes include "a district-wide centralized online bullying form" and classroom posters that define bullying and how to report bullying, Kedziora said.

"On behalf of the Moreno Valley Unified School District Board of Education, we want you to know that we truly care about each and every student and staff member in our district. The news of Diego’s death was not something we took lightly. The safety and well-being of our students will remain our top priority," Kedziora continued.

The family will "forever be heartbroken" by Diego’s death but hopes his story "brings about change in school districts across the country," their attorney said.

Minyvonne Burke is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News.

Western Journal of Emergency Medicine: Integrating Emergency Care with Population Health

A Case Study with an Identified Bully: Policy and Practice Implications

• Huddleston, Lillie B ;
• Varjas, Kris ;
• Meyers, Joel ;
• Cadenhead, Catherine

Objective: Bullying is a serious public health problem that may include verbal or physical injury as well as social isolation or exclusion. As a result, research is needed to establish a database for policies and interventions designed to prevent bullying and its negative effects. This paper presented a case study that contributed to the literature by describing an intervention for bullies that has implications for research, practice and related policies regarding bullying.

Methods: An individualized intervention for an identified bully was implemented using the Participatory Culture-Specific Intervention Model (PCSIM; Nastasi, Moore, & Varjas, 2004) with a seventh-grade middle school student. Ecological and culture-specific perspectives were used to develop and implement the intervention that included psychoeducational sessions with the student and consultation with the parent and school personnel. A mixed methods intervention design was used with the following informants: the target student, the mother of the student, a teacher and the school counselor. Qualitative data included semi-structured interviews with the parent, teacher and student, narrative classroom observations and evaluation/feedback forms filled out by the student and interventionist. Quantitative data included the following quantitative surveys (i.e., Child Posttraumatic Stress Reaction Index [CPTS-RI] and the Behavior Assessment Scale for Children, 2nd Edition). Both qualitative and quantitative data were used to evaluate the acceptability, integrity and efficacy of this intervention.

Results: The process of intervention design, implementation and evaluation are described through an illustrative case study. Qualitative and quantitative findings indicated a decrease in internalizing, externalizing and bullying behaviors as reported by the teacher and the mother, and a high degree of acceptability and treatment integrity as reported by multiple stakeholders.

Conclusion: This case study provided important contributions by describing an intervention that is targeted to specific needs of the bully by designing culture specific interventions and working with the student’s unique environmental contexts. Additional contributions included the use of mixed methods to document acceptability, integrity and efficacy of an intervention with documented positive effects in these areas. In addition, implications for policy and practice related to the treatment of students identified as bullies and future research needs are discussed. [West J Emerg Med 2011; XX(X)XX-XX].

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After Teen’s Suicide, a New Jersey Community Grapples With Bullying

Amid grief and outrage over the death of Adriana Kuch, 14, students have mounted protests, and a schools superintendent has resigned.

By Michael Rothfeld and Christina Caron

Fourteen-year-old Adriana Kuch told her father that she could not bear the humiliation after she was attacked by another girl inside her New Jersey high school and a clip of the assault was posted to TikTok.

“She said, ‘I don’t want to be that girl who gets beat up on video and made fun of,’” Adriana’s father, Michael Kuch, recalled his daughter saying as they sat in the kitchen of their home in Bayville.

“Can you imagine walking through the school with her face beat in?” he asked.

The day after the Feb. 1 assault, Adriana retreated to her room at about 10 p.m. and took her own life during the night, he said.

The attack, which her father has accused the school district of mishandling, and Adriana’s suicide have reverberated through Ocean County communities near the Jersey Shore and across the state. Public grieving and outrage have led officials to grapple anew with the prevalence of bullying in schools, how it affects children and the response — or lack of one — by administrators.

In recent days, students have protested in front of Adriana’s high school, the superintendent of the Central Regional School District has resigned and four girls have been criminally charged in connection with the assault.

“There is obviously a great deal of rightful anguish and emotion with Adriana’s passing, from her family, friends and within our community at large,” said Carmen Amato, the mayor of Berkeley Township, in an email.

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Factors predicting in-school and electronic bullying among high school students in the united states: an analysis of the 2021 youth risk behavior surveillance system.

1. Introduction

2. materials and methods, 2.1. data source, 2.2. variables, 2.3. analysis, 3.1. cyberbullying model, 3.2. in-school bullying, 4. discussion, 5. conclusions, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Nguyen, T.H.; Shah, G.H.; Kaur, R.; Muzamil, M.; Ikhile, O.; Ayangunna, E. Factors Predicting In-School and Electronic Bullying among High School Students in the United States: An Analysis of the 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System. Children 2024 , 11 , 788. https://doi.org/10.3390/children11070788

Nguyen TH, Shah GH, Kaur R, Muzamil M, Ikhile O, Ayangunna E. Factors Predicting In-School and Electronic Bullying among High School Students in the United States: An Analysis of the 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System. Children . 2024; 11(7):788. https://doi.org/10.3390/children11070788

Nguyen, Tran H., Gulzar H. Shah, Ravneet Kaur, Maham Muzamil, Osaremhen Ikhile, and Elizabeth Ayangunna. 2024. "Factors Predicting In-School and Electronic Bullying among High School Students in the United States: An Analysis of the 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System" Children 11, no. 7: 788. https://doi.org/10.3390/children11070788

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Share Your Cyberbullying Story

Share and read cyberbullying stories posted by others below. We have many resources on this site to help you deal with cyberbullying. If you are a teen, check out: Responding to Cyberbullying: Top Ten Tips for Teens. If you are an adult who is being harassed online, see our recommendations here . If you are a parent of a child who is being cyberbullied, please see: Responding to Cyberbullying: Top Ten Tips for Parents and educators should review: Responding to Cyberbullying: Top Ten Tips for Educators.

If you feel comfortable sharing your story, we would like to hear from you. You can anonymize your experiences if you’d like, and we promise to maintain your individual confidentiality to the maximum extent of the law. The more detail you can provide the better.  We use these stories to educate the public about the serious nature of cyberbullying with the goal of preventing others from doing it. We read every one of these stories and please know that you are not alone.  Even though it may seem like there is nothing that can be done to stop the cyberbullying, don’t give up.

Please note that any stories, anecdotes, or screenshots sent through email or through cyberbullying.org to us can be used by us as real-life examples of cyberbullying in academic papers, books, and presentations.  While form submissions through cyberbullying.org are anonymized, we will  never share any personal, identifying information  that you voluntarily choose to provide us in your communications to (or with) us.  If you have any questions or concerns about this, please  contact us .

SOME CYBERBULLYING STORIES SHARED WITH US

The following is a small sample of the thousands of anecdotal cyberbullying stories and comments we’ve received from children and adolescents who have experienced cyberbullying. If you would like to anonymously submit a description of your cyberbullying experience to us, please do so in the form below. Please provide as many specific details of your experience as you can.

""There is a site right now on face book that is called "Calling all hoes" that seems to be a place for people to write, for all the world to see, any hurtful or sick thought about anyone that they don't like-- Face Book refuses to take the page down... I don't know what to do and I feel that something needs to be done before we are hearing on the news about some poor kid who killed themselves over what's being written about them on this vile site. Help..... Anyone know how I, we, can begin the process of taking this Facebook page down?" "  - 17 year-old girl from US

""I have been friends with this person for 3 years now. Well best friends. I never thought she could do this to me. She's lying and getting our friends on her said. All i can do is watch. She's called me " Ugly RagDoll , Useless , Babied all my life , Jealous , I need to grow up , unpopular , I can go and riot under a rock! Who says these kinds of things? Only someone that is heartless and that has never been bullied before. They don't know how it feels i guess.""  - 12 year-old girl from MI

""My sixteen year old son was cyber bullied on Facebook over a period of 8 hours. The event was so traumatic it caused my son to have an acute psychotic break and to be hospitalized in an adolescent psychiatric ward for almost a month. He is changed forever and will never be the same mentally. Internet bullying can hurt and affect people and kids need to know this. These kids are not being punished in any way and think the incident is funny! We know it is life changing." "  - Parent of 16 year-old boy from MN

""Being I have been bullied many times before it makes me not want to live in this world anymore. I've been called probably every name out there.it really hurts. I sometimes contemplate suicide but i think where will that get me? i would only end up hurting the ones that i love.""  - 14 year-old girl from WA

""I am a Facebook user and I have reported these two people who are female who are putting all kinds of things about me on their wall and Facebook apparently don't care because they have not done anything about the bullying so far before or now. I don't think that this is right they should take these problems very serious!""  - 36 year-old woman from Pawtucket, RI

""I've been bully by the same person for almost 4 years now [AND YES, IS STILL HAPPENING RIGHT NOW] and he is an underclassman at my school. I don't know what the problem that got into him, I wasn't even doing anything. I thought that underclassmen should respect upperclassmen. He added me on Facebook and I just randomly accepted him, then on my birthday he start to say bunch of random crap to me and bunch of harsh stuff. Then a week ago, I blocked him and deleted him from my contact because he keeps bullying me no matter when, even in class or online. You don't have no idea how it makes me feel. Being bully by the same person for more than 3 years is pretty sucks, whenever i see him, I always look myself down even though I'm a whole lot older than him, I feel frustrated.”"  - 15 year-old boy from Muscat, Oman

""Whenever I am on Facebook, I am in fear of my account being hacked, mostly for the fact that Facebook app Yoville is a very effective method to obtain information and be able to successfully hack Facebook. I can't help but play it because i have online friends that I chat with. I just hate the fact that there are people that hack Facebook accounts through yoville for pleasure.""  - 18 year-old girl from NM

""It feels like you could die inside." "  - 13 year-old girl from CA

""My friend is Jamaican. There are 5 boys in our class and they bully this girl because she is black. They tell her to go back to KFC and they call her "Black Momma". No, this problem is not being solved and I'm scared to help her and tell them to stop. They are very mean and dangerous kids. We are in the same class.7th grade. In the age group of 12-13 or possibly 11 or 14." "  - 12 year-old girl from Brooklyn, NY

""A boy in my sixth grade math class called me mean names. Like four eyes, alien and more just for wearing glasses. It made me very upset. I don't think that kids who wear glasses shouldn't get made fun of. It's not someone's fault for wearing glasses.""  - 11 year-old boy from MI

""I have been threatened that someone was going to kill me and told me to shut the fuck up here is a picture http://twitpic.com/48br8p""  - 12 year-old boy from WA

""I've been bullied on Twitter, by two people in the last couple weeks. I've told them to stop and to leave me alone, but they keep at it. After I told them to stop and leave me alone, I stopped communication with them but they still kept tweeting me. I feel like I can't say anything with someone on Twitter bullying me. I try to make it look like I don't care and all, but it never seems to work. I've reported and blocked them. Anyone have any suggestions please?" "  - 21 year-old girl from USA

""How ironic that Miranda Cosgrove is being used as the celebrity face for anti-bullying, since I just told my 11 yr. old she can no longer watch "iCarly" because Carly and Sam (especially Sam) consistently bully "the less cool kids" on that show. Just watch one episode and you will see it. This is the problem. Everyone talks about stopping bullying, but they don't even recognize that THEY ARE THE BULLY!!!""  - 11 year-old girl from USA

""There's a game called habbo.com. Now there's a certain room in the called chromide club where the kids go to make fun of people. It's bad because they get your Facebook and make fun of the way u look. They spam your Facebook throughout the game and it hurts people's feelings.""  - 13 year-old girl from USA

""My daughter has recently been bullied by her so called "friends" so badly that we had to take her out of the school and enroll her in a private school which allows us to home school since it is such a distance to travel. We approached the school which did nothing. They acted concern but did not act on the information. The bullying did not stop at school, it went on further onto Facebook. The girls thought they it was funny and tried to make it look like my daughter had been saying ugly things about them. The awful part was while they were doing this they were acting like they were her friend and staying at our house. They actually said they had been planning all of it!! We thought it would quit once we took her out of the school, but they did not quit. It has affected her emotionally. She feels isolated because they went throughout the whole school telling lies about her. People were texting her and calling her as well as posting on Facebook. She blocked so many people but it has really affected her. I feel for her safety and that it has really affected her self-esteem. As a parent, I am angry at the other parents and at the school system. We have been let down by this school system. I am considering contacting the Texas Education Association. This is a large school district which has turned a blind eye to my child's wellbeing.""  - 16 year-old girl from TX

""some weirdo on twitter said some very hurtful things to me. Mostly about being a Christian. i don't want to go into it any more than that.""  - 13 year-old girl from WI

""Well i always get bullied and i hate it i feel like killing myself sometimes.""  - 13 year-old girl from Victoria, Australia

""I found my daughter was being cyber bullied a week ago. It had started a few weeks earlier but became extreme last week. This was part of an ongoing bullying campaigned by a group of girls at her school after a broken friendship. When it became Cyber I kept copies of the harassment which was lucky as I was able to take it to the school. She had been called vile horrible names, accused for things she hadn't done and set up to appear racist. There were threats of bashing. Finally she was provoked and she ended up using language out of character in retaliation. We rang the school who suggested the Police. We rang them and they said that as they are all under 14yrsold they couldn't do much. I then referred to the got schools policy which clearly stated that if cyber bullying could be directly related to the child and school then it was an issue the school had to deal with in order to create a safe environment for my daughter. Feeling i might be dismissed with "your daughter is too sensitive" or similar I wrote a very precise 3 page letter with 6 attachments cover 22 pages of evidence. Protocol was then followed which was satisfactory. I did however suggest that a very active learning program be set up to educate these children on how to use Facebook and how to change privacy settings etc. I explained that banning this technology was a useless endeavor and would not work so we need to work with it. I would love to be able to do more in the schools so have found your site fantastic.""  - 11 year-old girl from Australia

""I was walking home from school when i got a text message that read ‘you wait till tomorrow bitch you're going to die' when i got home i asked what was the matter she told me that she heard i told my cousin which was her boyfriend she was cheating on him (which was a lie). i tried to confront her but it failed i kept getting threating messages but it soon stopped when my cousin broke up with her.""  - 18 year-old girl from Victoria, Australia

""My son has been receiving text messages that are being set up on a computer internet webmail address. The person is sending him little messages, not really threatening, but bothersome. The person set up a bogus email address and sends messages to his cell phone up to 50 to 60 at a time of the same message. It ties up his phone and is a problem. He has already had to change his number once but the person found it. We are going to go to our State's Cyber bullying division for help after local police could not do anything.""  - Parent of 19 year-old boy from MS

""When I was 15, a freshman in high school, I was bullied over the Internet and at school. I felt like it came out of nowhere. One day the group of girls I called friends turned against me viciously over MySpace. They created a fake MySpace profile for me, which contained my cell phone number and instant message name. They photo shopped obscene sexual photographs of me and posted them in this profile. I was getting calls and began being stalked by strange men. These girls would make up sexually explicit rumors about me even though at the time I was a virgin. They would instant message me and tell me I was going to die. They were going to kill me. I was afraid to leave the house, to have friends, to pick up the phone. I lived in fear for so long. I knew they were looking for a fight and I refused to give them one so I deleted all known online presence and changed my number. I became recluse, a prisoner in my own home. Once I graduated high school I applied to college outside of my hometown to run away. Now, I am 22 and still have to live with the effects of these cruel girls. Trauma is hard to recover from but I know it is possible and I am stronger now than I have ever been. I am not that scared 15-year-old girl but I am still haunted by the girl I used to be." "  - 22 year-old girl from Middletown NY

""A guy i know (he is a good friend of mine now) used to be pretty cruel to me in front of my friends, mocking me. But i just want to say to every victim out there, don't stop believing it will all get better. Stand up for yourself, fight, do whatever you can. Peace.""  - 14 year-old boy from IA

""I think that cyber bullying is one of the worst things that a teenager may be exposed to. But in this age kids cannot act properly. The cyber-bullies are always not self-confident children who, in many cases, envy their victims. I was bullied twice. The first incident happened 2 years ago in a new social site- Formspring.me In this site you can send your opinion or question anonymously. One person sent me a message claiming that I was fake and that I wasn't a good friend. I was too offended to answer and I just disabled my account. The second incident happened a year ago. Those who I had considered my "best friends" tended to tease me often about my appearance. This teasing eventually led to harsh words exchanged over Facebook, which by a month time resulted in cyber-bullying. The bullying ended when I blocked them, and moved after the school year. So if you are bullied the best thing to do is to block those people or just find a different social network. Don't pay attention to the bullies because most of things they say are not true. However, if the bullying becomes very serious then an adult should be informed for help.""  - 14 year-old boy from USA

""I was and still am being bully by girls that once where my best friends. They tease and taught me and call me ugly, and some not so nice names. They keep messageing me on facebook and saying i need to stop when it isthem. Yesturday i heard this story of a 13 year old boy who committed suicide because of the bullies i was crying becasue of what happens to me. i just want it to STOP! But every time i tell the pricipial he will not listen:(...it is very hard but i deal with it.""  - 12 year-old girl from IL

""Cyber Bullying is a serious topic! I was bullied and began to cut myself... You may want to know why... time to tell I was bullied, stalked, and harassed. Never to my face but online the people who bullied me would make fake pages and put me on them saying I'm how and everything I'm willing 'to do' with a guy, but nothing on them were true... They told people to walk up to me and ask me if I was a hoe, lesbian, dyke, slut, pregnant.. etc. I couldn't take it anymore I was on the verge of suicide and when you're going through this you want to handle it alone, but truthfully you can't. So I began to cut. For everything I was going through. I got help. I came clean to a trusted adult and they told my mom everything my mom got very upset and began to take pills to solve her problems. I got madder and cut even more then I finally said no! STOP I haven't cut in a month and 5 days... i use to cut every day. So to wrap this up I'm done cutting my mom's still on pills and I told the police (about the bullying) and guess what. The sites and texts are gone!!! :)""  - 14 year-old girl from MN

""On December 17, 2010, my daughter was a victim of cyber bullying. There were four children involved in a chartroom within their e-mail accounts. One ring leader who seemed rather angry with my daughter started name calling, letting her know nobody liked her, and even went as far as wishing she would die in a hole. This obviously was a very hurtful conversation which led to my 11-year-old daughter to even consider death as an option. I thankfully monitor my child's accounts and was able to copy the conversation, and bring this conversation to my child's school. They acted quickly, and knew the severity of the situation. My hope is that there will be a positive outcome, and the four involved will have the opportunity to learn from this. Education and positive guidance are important tools to use as you do not want it to repeat, nor for you want it to fester in the minds of these young souls.""  - Father of 12 year-old girl from VA

""Our Pastor was texting our daughter early morning and late at night. Then started FB emails telling her to stay in contact however she could. He told her how horrible her family is and what liars we were. Told her we did things just to make her feel bad. We spent $35,000,00 to get a Permanent Injunction prohibiting contact for 10 years. Now he is suing us for his attorney fees.""  - Mother of 17 year-old girl from IL

""I stopped being friends with this girl who was just a bad influence on me, and she got a couple of her friends to hate me. On MSN they had a group chat room, and it was the two girls, and they were threatening to bully me at school, and I got scared about it. (The first girl) said if I came to school she would beat me up during recess, so during that day I hid in the bathroom at lunch.""  - 12 year-old girl from AL

""I have an account on this site called Formspring, and what it was is I got cheated on by my ex, and someone was just like, ‘You need to let him go,' and started cussing me out. People are harsh. People are very harsh. Then they were saying my articles suck.""  - 16 year-old girl from AL

""I broke up with this guy because I wanted to keep our relationship secret. So after a week he all of a sudden started texting me and saying how me and my brother were brats and how I was a B****. He said some pretty nasty things. I asked him why he said it and he said it was because I broke his heart and he was getting revenge from that. Me and my friends often get bullied it's one thing if it's at school but to bring it home was another. We have to stick up for each other. I thought school was supposed to be safe.""  - 16 year-old girl from USA

""When I was thirteen, a friend of a friend, whom I had previously contacted on good terms, decided that in the absence of my physical self, the bullying that used to go on in elementary school (I had become homeschooled since) should start a new online. She insulted me, telling me how glad she was not to be put in close proximity with my allegedly ugly face anymore and mocking me for my perceived sexual orientation. Whenever I thought I'd seen the last of her, out of the blue she would instant message me again just to share her opinion. I hadn't seen her in almost a year, but she still entertained herself by telling me how horrible I was. It was like she was conjuring up the school situation which I had tried so hard to overcome.""  - 15 year-old girl from CA

""My daughter is a victim of cyber bullying she is 15 ,someone placed her picture on another person's face and wrote a lot of vicious, hateful, discusting lies about her and from one cell phone to another the hole school had it going around she didn't want to go to school anymore i had a place herin another school, her self-confidence, self-esteem her grades were failing, she got sick, the school didn't help us they just wanted us to not pay attention to this cruel behavior, as a parent i was pissed, hurt and confused, all i could do was try to talk to her but she said mom it's too hard to overlook when everywhere you walk people are pointing at you calling you names, i just took her away from the school changed her cell phone number and just pray." "  - Mother of 15 year-old girl from Los Angeles, CA

""I had asked a guy to prom and posted pictures on Facebook of me and him. a girl that used to be my friend from where i used to live commented on them saying that i was desperate and i only asked him because i knew no one would ask me. Luckily, some of my real friends defended me, but i will never forget sitting in front of the computer screen crying because of something someone said.""  - 16 year-old girl from AZ

""WELL I WAS IN THIS RELATIONSHIP WITH THIS BOY CEJAY AND HE STARTEDTO GET UPSET BECAUSE I DIDNT WANT TO DO ANY THING SEXUAL OR PHYSIACAL SO HE STARTED TO POST MEAN AND HERTFUL BLOGS ABOUT ME. HE EVEN COMMENTED ON ALLMY STATUS I WAS EMBARASSED. WHEN I CONFRONTED HIM ABOUT HE DIDNT EVEN CAREOR HAVE ANY REGRET BUT IT WAS A DIFERRENT STORY WHEN I GOT REVENGE BY TELLING THE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL ON HIM. THEN HE GOT UPSET AND DONE EVEN MEANER THINGS TO ME LIKE SEXUALLY HARRASSING ME BUT SINCE THEN IT BEEN BETTER BECAUSEI ERASED ALL OF MY EMAIL ACCOUNTS EVEN GOT OUT OF PUBLIC SCHOOL.""  - 14 year-old girl from Columbus, OH

""I was the new girl in school and everyone just had to be mean to me. The girls in my class wrote my name on the bathroom stall saying i like two boys when i did not even like one of them. i had trusted two of the girls and they let me down. In the bathroom stall every single girl could see it. Luckily i told my mom and then she told my teacher and they got detention with the principal for a week.""  - 12 year-old girl from Ontario

""Last year when i was 16 i was bulled because i liked this boy, my friend liked him too. So i started talking to him one day and my friend seen us so she stopped talking to me. She started spreading rumors about me. People us to beat me up after school. This went on for months until i told my father he went up to the school and told the principle. He suspended the kids now they don't mess with me anymore. If you are being bulled don't be afraid to tell an adult don't take matters into your hands don't let bullying happen if you see it tell an adult.""  - 16 year-old girl from OH

""I was on Facebook when a friend of mine wrote on my wall that whenever I was in someone's life their life started to get fucked up. That hurt a lot because I trusted this person. He verbally bullies me whenever he gets the chance. I don't want to tell my mom because she'll make a big deal about it. I'm really getting hurt from this. Why does he have to be a wimp and say it online and not to my face? He'd be a man if he did.""  - 15 year-old boy from MI

""I was bullied on a site, like MySpace. I had a MySpace page devoted to me. I thought for the longest time about killing myself, until one day I realized that god put me on this earth for a reason.. And killing myself wouldn't so any good. My bullies put signs in my yard. What killed me is the fact that the school could not do anything because it was done online. I will never get over this. Even though it happened a few years ago.""  - 16 year-old girl from IN

""Some girl in my daughter's grade started a rumor that my daughter is a lesbian, this got all over school, not happy with that she starting texting her with all this comments. I spoke to her mom and ask her to please make her stop. Well big mistake...she post comments on Facebook, mocking her. We will start counseling very soon, I'm afraid for my daughter safety, not sure how bad this is affecting her, and she tells me that she's trying to avoid them in school. This is a terrible experience that no child have to go thru.""  - Mother of 14 year-old girl from Suffolk, NY

""People always make fun of me because of my weight. They say I'm pretty but i can't believe them. Last year i was being bullied by an 8th grader at my school. People would send me messages saying that I'm a disgrace i shouldn't be in this world. my best friend also told me that after we got in a fight, i cried for so long knowing my best friend thought that of me and what hurt me too was that she said it with hatred the look in her eyes was like she never wanted to see or hear from me again. i felt so bad i wanted to kill myself. i thought it was the only way out. I've been bullied since i was in pre-school. i thought it would go away by now but its only getting worse. My sisters even make fun of me but they say that their just playing around. They don't think it doesn't hurt me but it does especially coming from my sisters, it makes me feel even worse.""  - 13 year-old girl from NV

""This girl I've known for a few years liked my boyfriend. She would always try to make me jealous by hugging him or anything she could think of. One day she posted a bulletin on MySpace all about him and I told her she shouldn't talk about him like that. She ended up harassing me online, calling me names. But when I went to school she would never say anything to my face, she denied ever saying anything to me when I confronted her in front of her friends. Then when I went back home she kept doing it over the computer. Her insults getting worse. Then I went to school and confronted her again and got in a fight. She hit me and I beat her up and now I don't know if that was the right thing to do. What else could I do?" "  - 15 year-old girl from NV

""My 14 year old daughter is being cyber bullied now. Found a website she belongs to called "Formspring". This is where anyone can (even if you dont know them) can post a comment to you or ask you a question. Then you respond if you want. I was so appalled that you can post and ask questions anonymously and you have no have no idea who is posting. Many of these posts are telling my daughter that they hate her and she should just go kill herself. If you cant see who posts these things what options do you have? I have banned my kids from the computer now unless it's for homework. I have deleted their Facebook accts. At my wits end. My 24 yr old son has started a web page for this. And I think everyone should start one to try to pull together communities in fighting this.""  - 14 year-old girl from USA

""I have a formspring account, which anonymously allows people to ask you questions. Instead of receiving what i thought would be nice questions, i constantly was sent comments like "you're ugly", "you're stupid", "you're a slut", etc. I have a total of over 1000 formspring "questions" and i would say that 95% of them were verbal abusing me and completely destroying my self-esteem. It got to the point where i couldn't stand going to school or even looking at myself in the mirror knowing that when people see me they think of a stupid, ugly, whore. People that stick and stones can break your bones, but names can never hurt you. But i have come to realization that the statement does not apply to the majority of teenagers. Verbal Abuse hurts.""  - 16 year-old girl from VA

""I was picked on in the 5th grade by having my stuff pushed off the table or having my belongings stolen. it went into 7th grade where i completely lost it, beat up the kid who was the leader of the bullies, and now he gives me the respect i deserve. Violence isn't usually the way to go, but in this case it helped a lot.""  - 14 year old boy from MA

""Hi my name is _____ i was targeted online on Facebook. One of my friends who i thought was my friend made a Facebook page that had the title _____ is pregnant. I'm not pregnant. I was so frustrated and upset because i didn't deserve this. My family and I am Catholic. One of my friends got brought into this. I went to the principle and he dealt with it. I have been a target my whole life how do i stop it.""  - 16 year-old girl from PA

""I have a fifteen year old who suffers from anxiety and depression and just yesterday I filed a police report. My son has a Facebook account and a classmate was posting some very disturbing comments to my son he was telling my son to end his life already, threatening him that if he went to school he was going to kick his a#! and calling my son a spic and telling my son to go back across the border my sons status on face book is bisexual and the things they were saying about him were disturbing. I printed all the posts went to my local police dept. were the police officer told me that he was not sure they could do much since they are minors could you believe that! I insisted I wanted something done and charges filed he gave me a report number and would call me today. I called my lawyer!""  - 15 year-old boy from MD

""Teammates, unknowingly to the victim, accessed the victims phone and put embarrassing remarks on the victims Facebook page, which were attributed to the victim. It appeared that the victim was confessing that they were gay.""  - 14 year-old boy from MD

""I came to college thinking everything would be all fun and games. I shortly found out it was not. My suite-mates, did not like me, for reasons I do not know. When they discovered I had a formspring page, they took the chance to say things to me that hit home, and then took actions against me in person. I felt hopeless, and the University I currently attend did not do anything about it. It was a low point in my life." "  - 18 year-old girl from NY

""I try to ignore her but she turns everyone against me and makes my life miserable. She spreads awful rumors about me and i just can't take it.""  - 14 year-old girl from TX

""My best friend and I were so close, we could almost be sisters. We were going on holiday to Scotland in October to take a break from all our crazy work from school, because we both just started an early GCSE. Until she started getting friendly with another girl, who I instantly didn't like, as I thought she was a bad influence. Eventually I started getting nasty texts and emails, and messages on MSN about my appearance and personality. I broke down in tears one night when something about Scotland came on the television. I started getting emotionally depressed at home and at school, and my work was getting effected and my family was deeply alarmed by this. In the end I told her that I wasn't sure if i wanted to go to Scotland with her, so the messages got worse. In the end I showed my parents and teachers and they were had a word with. It's not so bad now, even though I still get depressed sometimes, but now I'm sure who my true friends are." "  - 13 year-old girl from England

""When I was 13 in middle school I would receive anonymous phone calls on my cell phone during school and after school from some boys in my Spanish class threatening to rape me, kidnap me, kill me, and kill my dog. It was literally one of the most terrifying things that had ever happened to me, and after about 2 weeks of putting up with it, I finally reported them and they were arrested. Unfortunately that's not where it ended. These boys turned out to be the well-loved class clowns of the school and the torment from other students continued on MySpace. I ended up deleting it and didn't create another one until mid-8th grade when tensions died down a bit. I felt miserable for the rest of my middle school career and pleaded with my parents to transfer schools but they wouldn't listen. I did try to commit suicide more than once. The depression carried over into high school, but it was masked by having new friends that actually liked me. Eventually I did get help mid-Senior year and am continuing talk therapy in college.""  - 18 year-old girl from FL

""As you know, Japan has very bad bullying. Cyber bullying, physical bullying, and mental abuse bullying. We have a very high rate of suicide attempts at the age bracket of middle school kids to high school kids. This is a story about a best friend I had who committed suicide right in front of me. And all it started was a crush she had, it was such a small thing. All she wanted to do is have a normal teenage life; that never happened. She wanted to join in the group but everyone called her "gloomy, sullen, creepy." It wasn't very nice at all. The tone of their voices changed when she came in the room, there were thumbnails in her shoes, dead animals in her desk, and many more. There were also a lot of hate mail. Sometimes just to ease the pain I deleted the mails before she could even see them, but that didn't do much good. I wish I could've helped more... Every day I saw her eyes die and become darker and darker. It was the time when I was going home with her and we were waiting for the train to pass by; it was that time when she just pushed me away and ran in front of the tracks and committed suicide. Now it has been 3 years since she did this act, I still regret not saving her, I still regret everything I could not have done.""  - 16 year-old girl from Japan

""I was cyber bullied when i was in 8th grade by a bunch of girls telling me that i need to get a life so i went home told my mom and they kept bullying me still so then i just kept skipping school and getting i n trouble at home and then just ran away then i finally got everything figured out with the cops.""  - 13 year-old girl from KY

""I was cyber bullied when i was in 8th grade by a bunch of girls telling me that i need to get a life so i went home told my mom and they kept bullying me still so then i just kept skipping school and getting i n trouble at home and then just ran away then i finally got everything figured out with the cops""  - 13 year-old girl from KY

""When I was 8 years old, I met a girl who had gotten into a fight with me a week later. This resulted in cyber bullying that lasted 5 years. The girl was now 16 and was still harassing me. I told my parents who stopped the messages but then the girls mugged me and attacked me. I was in the hospital for 1 week. The girls were caught by the police and now the girls are in juvenile hall. I'm glad that it stopped.""  - 14 year-old girl from Wales, UK

""Honestly when I was being cyber bullied I felt like I wanted to never get out of the house or talk to anyone ever again. It led me to depression and the person who was bullying me... they believed that it was funny. I ended up staying quiet and even today I do get bullied online.""  - 17 year-old girl from NJ

""I get mean messages on Formspring, with people telling me I'm fat and ugly and stupid. I don't know what I ever did to anyone. I wish it wasn't anonymous...""  - 15 year-old boy from IL

""I frequent the adam4adam site often; at some point started getting several negative emails from this person who me of i have never met; I changed my screen name a few times only to have my old screen name come back tiaras me even more over the same thing. have complained to the adam for adam site & the best advice they could give me is to just block the person; what really made me up site with the site was that was once called a porch monkey & all they did was tell me to block the guy & not much was done to stop him from accessing his account; have complained many times that I want to take legal action against the person that keeps changing screen name when i change names; how can I find out this persons isp address to press charges??""  - 45 year-old man from CA

""I got cyber bullied after i got surgery on my knee & it was horrible they always said go die & your worthless why are you here? You're wasting air. it made me so depressed and i thought of suicide plenty of times but i wasn't going to let them get to me so i deleted all of them from my Facebook, MySpace and all that & it stopped until i went back to school. i just had surgery and couldn't walk so they put me in a wheelchair & everything was fine the few first days i had so many friends and they all loved me & helped me, but when my best friend came home from Mexico all hell broke loose, & people kept saying i was talking about her & lying about everything which wasn't true someone hated me so much they decide to make my life hell. That day @ lunch i had about 20 girls who were mad @ me because "i lied " & i didn't. they all tried to hit me & fight me when i was in a wheelchair after 5days after my surgery, so my boyfriend took me to the consular & that when i know i am de the biggest mistake, after that i got horrible texts,& people would call me & leave me voice mails & stuff and it was horrible , i thought about suicide & my mom caught me & ending up in the hospital i never want to go through that again it was horrible, all this was 1 year ago & this stuff is still going on I wish it would just stop.""  - 13 year-old girl from OH

""I usually feel pretty and liked it's not like i brag i just feel regular then on MySpace I comment on some girls status saying something like "I do that too!" I was just replying to something she said. Then like 5 minutes later she put.. "Sorry Friend But I See The Opposite Of Beautiful & Gorgeous When I Look At Herr (;" I felt something go threw me like jeeze what's wrong I was nice and friendly i don't deserve this! And usually I'm very insecure about my appearance and when I finally feel better she had to ruin it oh well STOP CYBER BULLYING" "  - 13 year-old girl from Sacramento, CA

""My elderly mother has been harassed by email by two different neighbors. The bullying has gotten so bad that it is causing health issues and my parents are trying to sell their house. They have hired a lawyer and reported the harassment to the police but to no avail. The police said they could arrest the people responsible but that wouldn't stop the harassment. I think this comes under the cyber bulling law in Iowa but I don't know if it has been used other than with schools and youths. I really need help for my parents.""  - Daughter of an 83 year-old woman from IA

""okaay so it's this boy and my friend use to go with him.. and so he liked me and i liked him back and so i asked my friend is it ok if i go with the boy she said alright she over him and i can have him and when i start going with him she started getting mad at me and i told her if it means that much to you ill break up with the boy cause i don't need no boys in my life as long as i got my friends.. so then she started calling my phone and started cussing me out so hung up and put her on my block list and she left me a voicemail threating me and all this other stuff i ignored it. Cause it doesn't really matter anymore.""  - 12 year-old girl from TX

""I was on aim minding my own business, and then all of a sudden a screen name I didn't recognize popped up. They started to talk to me and call me really horrible names. I felt like crying. I asked who it was a bunch of times and all they said was "none of your business." I blocked them but they always made a different screen name. I remember every word they said to me. I will never ever let it go because from that day on I was harassed badly and still never figured out who it was.""  - 11 year-old girl from CA

""My friend and i have 3 cyber bullies. They would call us randomly on their phones and not leave us alone. They would also text us really mean and bad things, like they called us lezbians and something else really bad. Yesterday i was watching a movie and she called me 2 times and i said stop. Then she kept texting me so many mean things that i wanted to throw my phone against the wall. I told my mom and she called her. My mom told her that she wanted to talk to her parents and the girl hung up. After that the mean girls texted me, wow you can't fight your own battles! Now my friends mom and my mom are doing anything they can to stop this. My mom is worried this is going to carry on into middle school.""  - 11 year-old girl from MI

""My son has been cyber bullied by the same child that is his age for a while now, he has threatened to beat him up and tells my son to kill himself because no one cares about him. My child is so sensitive and not to mention small for his age with type one diabetes. I have no idea who to turn to for this problem. I want to go to this other kids house and have a chat with his mother, but I don't know my rights.""  - Mother of 12 year-old from WI

""I was at this anime site where peopled bulled non-stopped in this chat room. All they did was tell me how stupid i was for a year. But then i would go back because people where nice to me. I've went their for a year people keep yelling at me calling me stupid stupid stupid stupid stupidstuipd stuipd buti was addicted to chatting . now i've been banned thank god and is freeeeee.""  - 15 year-old boy from IL

""Hi, my son has been repeatedly humiliated and harassed through an online gaming forum by other teenagers. It has had a tremendous affect upon him, he has cried, become angry, and is confused as to why these people don't like him. There has been continues postings about him and harassing personal messages sent to him. I naturally told him to stay off of this site. When I contacted the administrators of this forum, I received a response from an Attorney who is an administrator. He told me there was nothing they could do. As our conversation continued and I expressed to him that as a Dad this forum that accepts children has an inherent responsibility to protect them. He eventually banned my son, ridiculed me as a Father and challenged me to try and do something. What can I do as a Dad to ensure that Children like my son won't be emotionally abused through a Forum that allows children?""  - Father of 12 year-old boy from CA

""My friend and i have 3 cyber bullies. They would call us randomly on their phones and not leave us alone. They would also text us really mean and bad things, like they called us lesbians and something else really bad. Yesterday i was watching a movie and she called me 2 times and i said stop. Then she kept texting me so many mean things that i wanted to throw my phone against the wall. I told my mom and she called her. My mom told her that she wanted to talk to her parents and the girl hung up. After that the mean girls texted me, wow you can't fight your own battles! Now my friends mom and my mom are doing anything they can to stop this. My mom is worried this is going to carry on into middle school.""  - 11 year-old boy from MI

""I am tired of having him messaging me and saying inappropriate things, threatening, and just being downright annoying! I'm tired of having to block him over and over, I've reported him more than once...but he is still here. This whole conflict with him is ruining my gaming experience. I hardly enjoy signing onto the PSN.""  - 16 year-old girl from USA

""Somebody on Facebook would not stop bullying me. He was harsh and kept saying I was a "slutty bitch" whatever that is. I was very depressed, regardless.""  - 12 year-old girl from Russia

""Once i went on Facebook and all my friends were making fun of me. They said that i should kill myself and no one likes me and stuff like that. i was depressed for a long time. All my 'friends' weren't talking to me and i didn't know what to do. i went home and thought about suicide but i just couldn't. The principal in my school had found out about this and confronted these kids. They said sorry but they didn't mean it. I've always thought about suicide ever since." "  - 12 year-old girl from OH

""For years, in middle school i spent every day of my life being bullied. i was called "the emo lezbo" for almost 3 years straight. now i am 15 and in high school with low self-esteem, and still thinking about suicide as the way out. i can't ask for help, I'm scared my mom will take it out on herself. Sometimes i can't handle it, i wish i could have started over, not as me, but someone pretty and smart that everyone would love.""  - 15 year-old girl from USA

""My so-called "best friend" and I were joking around making a fake music video, and when we were making it she pranked me by pushing me in the pull. I broke my nose pretty badly and the video went around my school like wild fire. To this day I still get made fun of and its 2 years later.""  - 18 year-old girl from USA

""I have a form spring and for the past month that i have had it I have been bullied on it. Thank god i am not like that 17 year old girl because the things being said to me are so mean I don't even know how a person can come up with this "shit" for lack of a better word. I feel if this person has such a problem with me they need to grow up and say it to me in person instead of try to act tough posting stuff without their name on it. The web site is for questions not insults and I think police should be more active on these site so people like that can get help because clearly there are issues!!!""  - 17 year-old girl from Tewksbury, MA

""As a mom, I'm devastated by the cyber-bullying taking place against my 15-year-old daughter. Kids are ganging up, saying horrible things - ugly, fat, bitch - anonymously. If it's devastating for me, I can't imagine what it's like for her.""  - 15 year-old girl from CT

""My friend told me about a chat website, so I went on it. It was fun at first, until there were people who started saying mean things and harassing me on the site for no reason. I still remember some of the things they said, and I wish I didn't, because you keep on remembering and wondering if maybe it is true." "  - 14 year-old boy from M

""I was on aim minding my own business, and then all of a sudden a screen name i didn't recognize popped up, they started to talk to me and call me really horrible names. I felt like crying . i asked who it was a bunch of times and all they said was "none of your business" i blocked them but they always made a different screen name , i remember every word they said to me ,this happened to me about 3 or 4 years ago. i will never ever let it go because from that day on i was harassed badly and still never figured out who it was . Note: for every kid that has an aim, and you don't know who it is , and when you ask them over and over again and they don't tell you , tell an adult . It's the best thing to do when your being harassed good luck everybody i wish you all best of luck.""  - 11 year-old girl from CA

""I've never ben bullied myself .yes I've bullied and i regret it and want to apologize to the people who have been bullied it is wrong and don't think anyone should take your life nor feel depressed because jerks want to bully.""  - 14 year-old boy from NC

""Sometimes it's hard to believe what starts it, The truth is whatever the reason revenge, or because it makes you feel good. Cyber bullying or bullying of any type is against the law. It can have horrible outcomes that will kill others, and sometimes it can lead others to do crimes, murders, and sometimes even cause deaths to innocents that had nothing to do with it in the first place. Its time to take a stand now, that when we teach our children its okay to get revenge, or hurt others if they have hurt you, then its then we teach them its okay to cause pain, wars, this is bullshit. We don't have a right to cause any pain to any person for whatever reason. The time is now to stop the violence and it stops here and now. In our schools, Computer Labs, and the internet. STOP hurting others, it doesn't feel good, and in the end could cause you more harm then you realize. I was the victim of cyber bullying, I was also the cause of it at one point because I had continued to try to get revenge on those that hurt me. In the end it wasn't much of anything but pain, and the pain continued on to my own friends and others. It's not worth it no matter how much someone hurts you its needs to stop and it stops now... So here I am trying to make it stop.""  - 33 year-old man from AZ

""I have autism and have been made fun of for most my childhood. It hurts me so much when people pick on me and hardly ever think before they speak. They gossip and say whatever they want to without asking themselves if they will be rude to someone else by saying it. I have grown up quite a bit and wish they could understand, but they don't. My heart breaks from this pain inside me and they don't care at all.""  - 17 year-old girl from WA

""I gett harassed by this girl named amber she is in my class she always say im ugly and i cry every day :(""  - 12 year-old girl from CA

""BIENG BULLIED ISN'T GREAT BECAUSE AFTER A WHILE YOU START TO BELIEVE THE STUFF THAT THEY SAID TO YOU. I STILL CRY WHENEVER I THINK ABOUT WHAT THEY SAID.""  - 10 year-old girl from CA

""My son made the high school baseball team in December by February the team started to call him Down syndrome Darren. They would tease him all the time and push him in the hallways with his books. In March we found out about a Facebook page made called Down syndrome Darren and he was mortified. He stopped eating as much. Cried a lot and made comments about death. We went to the coach and team mom and they said they would take care of it. The boys that made the website were suspended for one baseball game but the teasing continued and the physical bullying got worse even though the website came down. He had his gear hidden, grape fruits thrown at him, he was tripped, pushed, shoved, and he was given a baseball with a penis drawn on it with all kinds of obsinities written on it. My oldest son came to a game and the parents told him that if he started anything they would call the cops. He told them they should call the cops on their own kids. They told the school that my oldest son threatened their sons and the police called me the next day telling me that there would be someone there to watch the games and not to bring my oldest son to the games any more. I was glad someone would finally be watching the team, but he was there to protect the other boys not my son. When the season was over he left. The coach was so concerned about his varsity players that he left his junior varsity and freshman players alone and my son was ganged up on and forced to wrestle and body box twice while being filmed by several boys. He did not win. He was teased and humiliated. He came home really out of control of his emotions he was so upset. He was punching things, flipped over the couches, and was screaming at the top of his lungs. We had to take him to the hospital when he threatened to kill himself for he cut his arm all up. He was in the hospital for 6 days. The most the school has done is said they are investigating it and that they would refer him to a new school. He never wants to go back to that school but come on that is the best they can do?""  - Parent of 14 year-old boy from CA

""A group of boys who i meet through my hall of residence have always had a thing against me, i appear to be outgoing, happy, confident and loud. I stand up for myself. What they didn't know is that I suffered from a mild depression from issues in my past. After constantly saying mean stuff and making mean gestures to me whenever they saw me or i came up in conversation they decided to make a Facebook group for a 'leaving party' for me, even though everybody new they did not like me. i am going on a unit exchange and they said this was for me and sarcastically talked about how sad they will be and how will they cope without me. Everybody knew it was a joke, they publicly humiliated me and expressed their hate for me. I was very very distressed and my confidence was and still is lowered. I was diagnosed with severe depression and have had suicidal thoughts which i am working on to get better. It has been a month and not one of them has apologized, my mother and father are furious and want me to go to the proctor of my university about it or the police but I am unsure if they could do anything about it. I thought when I got to university this would stop but it has gotten worse and I do not know what action I should take against them but I am scared that they will do it to someone weaker to me and this could be very, very bad.""  - 19 year-old boy from NZ

""2 or 3 years back, when I used Youtube as my social network, I was cyber bullied by a white-power obsessed bully. On my profile I said I lived in the United States but was from Ecuador. When this guy read it he started posting rude spam comments calling me a "spick" and "wetback". Of course, I fought back as much as I can, and when my friends read his comments they helped. They were also being victimized. After a while, I just blocked him and we all reported him to the site. He was gone, but later on he came back, and the same thing happened. When he returned months later, I was already fed up with it and blocked him fast. Happened one more time after that, but I learned that I should just ignore it because whoever the person is, he doesn't know anything about me. Right now, nothing recent has happened, and I don't use Youtube anymore, and I hope that kids know never to let someone get to you because if they have to insult you through the computer, then they aren't worth the second thought.""  - 15 year-old girl from NY

""how does it feel being the fat ugly outcast of all your pretty skinny friends why do you take a bazillion pictures of yourself ...like your some kind of model? i think you're a little too big for even a plus size model...and think you have to be pretty to model ... so epic fail for you nuff said... ""  - 14 year-old girl from DE

""When I was very young, in about 4th grade, I remember this group of girls made a website about me. It had a picture of a pig on it and said " _____ is a fat pig and everyone hates her!" I was devastated when it happened, but when I look back I just laugh. Cyber bullying is a problem because the internet and technology gives people a sense of security. People are much more likely to send a threatening text to someone then say something to someone's face these days.""  - 19 year-old girl from MN

""I was at this anime site where peopled bulled non stopped in this chat room. All they did was tell me how stupid i was for a year. But then i would go back because people where nice to me. I've went there for a year people keep yelling at me calling me stupid stupid stupid stupid stupidstuipd stuipd but I was addicted to chatting. Now I've been banned thank god and is freeeeee.""  - 15 year-old girl from IL

""Whenever i get on Facebook all i see on people's pages are people getting bullied and it is so upsetting. i have gotten bullied through I'm on Facebook to and it hurt...""  - 13 year-old girl from IN

""I was bullied on the internet and it made me feel like I wanted to kill myself. I have MySpace and not Facebook, but a friend of mine has Facebook and there was a class photo that I was in, and this guy from my school that I don't even know wrote "isn't that eco girl i thought she left last rofl". I am really quiet in school, so I only speak to like 3 or 4 people but i thought that was offensive because i once liked green peace in 8th grade but what was written on fb was in 12th grade!!! then this other guy wrote "yeah it is and in the other photo she is smiling. i didn't even think she knew how. Very rare indeed" and another said "very rare indeed. my god". the whole time ppl would show me fb, no one had ever commented on anyone else so rudely. Ever. Thank god I graduated by now, but it still makes me upset and feel worthless. Sometimes I just think I should get plastic surgery or die my hair so that none of those jerks will ever recognize and hurt me again! Seriously.""  - 18 year-old girl from VA

""Ok well this is more like an ongoing thing. A month or so ago my girlfriend dumped me, ok that's nothing bad but she started to threaten me with the law over a t-shirt and a couple dvd's that i probably don't even have. She's been getting worse and worse ever since we broke up. I need to know what to do. it's getting way too far out of hand. I've asked her to leave me alone, never worked. I've tried to block her number somehow that didn't work either. If she can't text me she sends me emails, it's me, or messages me on my yearbook or MySpace. I'm normally a level headed person which is why I'm doing this. I just want it to stop.”"  - 16 year-old boy from MO

""I had just moved to a new school in san Antonio called Harlandale.It was my second day of school and all of a sudden people were calling me a bitch and taunting me all the time. Random girls woyld try to fight me, boys called me ugly and said I had an STI, and some girls even pulled my hair and puched me. It got worser as time passed. I told my teachers, peers, the counselor and even the principle, but no one cared. I was beyond depressed and tried several times to commit suicide. I had never felt such pain inmy life.""  - 11 year-old girl from San Antonio, TX

""I'm not going to lie, I'm not the prettiest girl out there, but when people tell me that online, it really hurts me. The fact that I don't know who they are extremely bothers me. It could be the girl next door, someone at school, or even my friends. For me, the internet is stressful. Thing shave been leaked out that I would not like people to know. This makes me on edge every time I share information with my best friends. In fact, after a while of this bullying, I stopped talking to people completely. Isolation seems to be the only remedy that helps. There have been many occasions where I have tried to confront my parents, but they're quite ignorant (not being mean) when it comes to the internet. I can't just quit getting online, because the internet is the only way to get away from everyone. I don't like being around people, due to my extreme cases of bullying on and offline. Only certain people do I feel comfortable around. Those most likely similar tome. I wish people would just have a sense of sensitivity. Maybe this would prevent some bullying. When teens do cruel and harmful things to others, it makes me feel as if they don't have much of a heart. I know they do, but they need to show compassion once in a while and take a minute to think if they are hurting others.""  - 14 year-old girl from IL

""On MySpace a friend of my friend sent a friend request to me, I accepted even though I didn't know her, if she was friends with one of my other friends she'd be OK. But the next time I got on MySpace I noticed I had a comment. It was the same girl I added earlier, and for no provoked reason, she commented on my picture that I was ugly. I denied the comment and deleted her from my friends list, but for the rest of the day that comment secretly bothered.""  - 14 year-old girl from IL

""I'm sure you've all heard about this new site formspring.me. It's a truly horrible site. It gives bullies a chance to verbally insult people without putting a face or a name to them. It wears people down after a while and only causes drama. I was harassed for a good amount of time on it when I had one. It caused drama between a good friend of mine and me. Thankfully we resolved it. People also thought it was their business to know about my boyfriend and I, and would constantly ask questions, and my parents also saw these too. Formspring.me should be deleted. It will only cause hurt for teenagers around the world.""  - 15 year-old girl from CA

""I was on a social networking site and I was invited to a group that was about me and how no one liked me. I am now in therapy.""  - 14 year-old girl from WA

""Being bullied is something I've had to deal with for a very long time. I learned that after a while you start to believe that what people are saying is true. Your ugly, you should go die, vampire, ghost, fatty, demon, your unwanted, you're not needed, no one cares about you, i wish you were gone then life would be so much better. I've gotten a few of those, the thing is though, and I've dealt with it since pre-k. Not many can say that now can they. The thing is though that you could go home and get away from that, but when you add the internet those hateful people find you even at home and then you can't escape those lies, and because you can't escape you start believe them. I probably wouldn't be here today if it weren't for my lack of strength to do something like that, and if it weren't for my only true friend that found me during the best possible time to save me from my withering mind. It still happens today, and every now and then i break down and cry thinking it would be better just to die but I'm too weak to do that.""  - 16 year-old girl from USA

""I had left a comment on a picture on Facebook one afternoon, saying nothing that could be possibly hurtful. About five minutes later, A girl replied telling me, "Shut up, no one cares about what you have to say." This was a good friend of mine, who supposedly liked me. I responded saying, "Uh, where in the world did that come from?" She told me she hated me, and that I was a fat slut. She of all people should have known that I'm no good at handling critics. I knew this girl could be harsh, but none of her other friends would stand up to her. Instead, they all ganged up on me! A boy I never spoke to in my life then started a HATE group, about me! People whom I've never spoken to joined, and this girl who I thought was my friend took my pictures from my profile, and uploaded them onto the group, using mean and hurtful captions. During this time, I was already dealing with horrible depression, OCD, and General Anxiety. It made everything worse, and I felt like my suicidal problems were coming back. I would be too scared to even log into my email, in fear of being harassed by strangers. Eventually, after at least a month, Facebook deleted the group, even though I reported it long before then. I will never be the same because of this experience. Now, I know how badly it hurts to be bullied, and feel as if no one is on your side anymore.""  - 13 year-old girl from NC

""This just happened recently. This girl i know keeps calling me flat chested and anorexic. I'm not either of them. She just does it to annoy me. It's getting old. Plus she is way skinnier and more flatter than me. She has no room to talk either. And then whenever i told her that what she was doing was immature, she still does it! And I will feel bad if i tell the teachers, because then a whole bunch of people will think I'm a baby. And I am confused about all of this.""  - 13 year-old girl from WI

""The website CollegeACB.com needs to stop receiving revenues from advertisers and be shut down, because the website has become a place for cyber bullying. My daughter is the recipient of cyber bullying from this website from University students. It is a site for name calling, derogatory comments, insults, and humiliating words. How can a student show face at a university when this site postings and threads are anonymous, open to anyone to read? The site is being misused, and the terms of use and laws allow this and the owner of the site written words "they do not monitor or are responsible for the content". Changes need to be made.""  - Mother of 21 year-old girl from CT

""My younger sister, a seventh grader, started getting texts from her so called "best friend." These texts consisted of "You're a whore." "No one likes you." "You can go die." My sister confronted these people and told them to stop, and then i said something to them also. She is proud she confronted them and they have stopped being meant to her. All of her friends stood up for her too, they knew it was wrong." "  - 17 year-old girl from ID

""My son is 15. Some kid at his high school has posted a hate page on Facebook. I reported it 2 days ago but it has not been removed. It's obviously created by high scholars so I don't know why not. A few kids signed on to it. My son would not have told me about it but his friend told me. He said my son said he would be suicidal if people signed on to a hate page and there it was. I don't think he is suicidal. I know he and his friends are having a hard time with adolescence. I have seen these boys through their growing years and seen many instances of bullying among them -- which I have challenged them to change. My son says the kid who made the page wants to date my son's ex-girlfriend and is angry because she still "sweats" my son. Also another boy slapped my son a few weeks ago. He did not retaliate because: a) he didn't want to get into trouble with the school (they didn't find out anyway) and b) rumor was that this kid had a gun and was on outskirts of a gang. My son is a popular kid on the whole. He is an athlete, thinks well of himself, socializes possibly too much. But he's not a kid with all the advantages: we are struggling for money and have never really had a middle class lifestyle despite my master's degree. Also my husband died one year ago. Schools never think my son is vulnerable because of his overt optimism and popularity by the way. ""  - Parent of 15 year-old boy from OR

""My son has been resiliently harassed, humiliated, insulted, and persecuted by a class mate and his friends due to my son's religious and political beliefs; he has also attacked my son due to his physical appearance and weight. The bully went as far as to use my son's picture and full name to post a false message in which my son was "coming on" to him as if he was a gay person. He actually published this fabricated conversation on Facebook and lobot 'for all to see. He has defamed my son's character at school. The school has not be able to contain or neutralize this student's actions. They suspended him for a few days, but the teen continues to post comments about my son. Facebook has done nothing to stop the harassment despite constant complaints from us. The school administrators fails to see the connection between the cyber bullying and the promotion of a hostile environment at school. The bullying is such that we are considering a civil suit against the bully. The behaviors has affected my son's self-esteem and desire to go to school. My son used to be an honor students but his grades are suffering. the Oregon Laws do not address cyber bulling. The school mandate to have a policy to address bullying only covers behaviors wile at school despite the fact that bullying behaviors at school and cyber bulling are heavily interconnected and are the continuation of each other.""  - Parent of 17 year-old boy from Salem, OR

""I am currently 18 years old, but most of the bullying in my life occurred when I was in elementary school all the way through most of high school. Growing up, I was one of the few Caucasian children in my school. I was bullied constantly about that. People would constantly try to push me around, and threaten me. I felt horrible about the fact that I was white, so much that I started to resent myself for it. I can remember back to the third grade when I got so depressed about having to go to school and face the other children that did nothing but belittle me. I stopped going to school for days at a time. On average I would miss about 8 or more days in a month. I moved to a different town, where I thought things would be different seeing as I was no longer the minority. Eight grade proved to be even worse than the school in my hometown. I moved from the ghetto to a suburban town. This made me an even bigger outcast than before. I got picked on, pushed around, and verbally abused. The teachers and principal refused to do anything to the girls that were constantly putting me down because of the deep pockets that their parents had. I became suicidal by the time I was 13, but at the same time my focus was also on revenge. Every time I got picked on I wanted to target the abuser, I wanted to get even. High school came, and it got worse my freshman year. I stopped going to school any chance I had. On average I attended maybe 1 full week at a time. It got so bad that I had to be pulled out of a regular high school and put into homeschooling.""  - 18 year-old girl from CA

""I've been cyber bullied for ages by different people. A lot of the people who I thought were my friends actually ended up stabbing me in the back, and hurting me. I couldn't go to school without thinking all day about these hurtful comments that they said about me. I just wish that I could be invisible from all of this sometimes, but I have nowhere to go in real life either since I'm a social outcast.""  - 15 year-old girl from USA

""After a dance recital I was in, this girl who also danced that day instant messaged me on AIM. I don't know how she got my screen name because I had never given it to her. The words she typed into that chat box still echo in my head, two years later. She called me a "frizzy haired freak," "fat," "ugly," and a number of other things. I blocked her but then she either made another screen name or had one already and IMed me yet again saying even worst things. I only told one close friend of mine what had happened. I responded back in the conversation a couple of times saying "Why are you doing this?" and after a couple things she had said I responded "You're not perfect, so why are you pointing out my imperfections?" and at the end of the conversation I said "Thank you very much for putting my down so much that I can't stop crying." Now I had not been one to even think about self-injury but it's what I resorted in for the last couple weeks of school and for the past couple of years. Bullying online is the worst because if you have your AIM settings set to log the chats, then if you accidentally click the conversation, it will pop up for you to see it. Now I have not read the conversation since that day, but the words are just haunting. Even now when I see her, I drop my head down to my chest and stop talking and walk away. It's the worst feeling to feel inferior to a fellow student, but that's what has happened to me.""  - 15 year-old girl from MA

""When I finished school my boyfriend and I broke up, he had been sleeping with another girl and after we broke up him, his friends and her friends would send me messages both on the phone and over the internet saying "you're fat" over and over. I got so many phone calls while I was at work and university. This continued for over 6 months and the police couldn't do anything. Aside from the cyber bullying I was also threatened with physical violence and my house and car were egged.""  - 18 year-old girl from Sydney, Australia

""A girl in the year under me sent me nasty messages via Facebook. They were quite unfriendly and really made me feel bad - I'd never even spoke to the girl before them. She didn't know anything about me, still, she judged me. It's hurtful when people judge you for no good reason, when people make up lies about you, and when they isolate you. I've learned this the hard way." "  - 15 year-old girl from UK

""My 11 year old daughter is in fifth grade and was called into the principal's office because a sixth grade girl had received a threatening email and the mother of that child had performed an internet search on the email and it came back with the name of my daughter and showed that she also had a Facebook account. My daughter has neither of these. They questioned her and believed that she was not involved. We found the Facebook accountant sent a friend request to it. The person accepted it. I asked this person, "who are you and where do you go to school?" They replied," your daughter and the name of her school" My daughter was standing next to me at the time, there is no way it could have been her. I was able to read the posts on the wall of this account and it had very vulgar language and even said "I love to have sex" What worries me the most is that this person has repeatedly added strange men to the site and when you pull up some of their pages they have pornography on them. Most claim to be from all over the world, but at least three list local addresses. I am very frightened for my daughter because now these strangers know where she lives and the name of her school. We have filed a police report, but until an actual crime has been committed, they will not investigate. The school has questioned several girls but was unable to find who is responsible. We have also sent Facebook complaints and a copy of the police report, but they have not responded and have not taken the site down. We were made aware of this over two weeks ago and the site just continues to grow. We are desperate to protect our daughter, but do not know what to do.""  - Parent of 11 year-old girl from TN

""I'm 15, and I've been bullied by this one girl who accuses me of talking behind her back, when I really didn't. She has no respect towards me OR my best friend. I sometimes talk behind her back with my best friend, but I know that isn't nice, and she does it as well. One day she came up to me, like she was up in my face saying ''SAY IT TO MY FACE!!'' and I was scared and didn't know what to do... thank god a teacher was nearby... we worked out the situation, and my final answer was to not be her friend anymore. She wanted to be mine, but after how she treated me, came up to me and almost hit me, talked about me online, I don't want that to be in my mind as we are 'friends', but all I can say is ''I'm done with her and how she treats me. She has no respect.'' and that I'm moving on. People who make you feel sad, stressed, and mad, and even worried... they really aren't your true friend... A true friend wouldn't make you feel uncomfortable now, would they? So don't let the small stuff get to you. Good Luck :)""  - 15 year-old girl from NY

""I went to check my e-mail and there was a message from some people in my old school sent these threatening e-mails some saying "we'll hunt you down at your NEW school and you'll never know what hit you" i felt very scared and at the same time i wondered how they knew my e-mail address. So i told a teacher at that school but then I remembered that at that school they do nothing about this stuff and they are still coming those e-mails.""  - 13 year-old girl from Canada

""I joined some forums and found out how quickly people dislike those with talent. The stuff they said made me want to off myself. But I never would do that it would give them too much satisfaction. Though I did cut myself. Cyber bullying is the real deal.""  - 17 year-old boy from NJ

""I posted a video of myself singing a song on YouTube, and then 5 days later I found a video that an "anonymous" person made that basically took my video, slowed it down, zoomed into my face, and this person made side comments in the video such as "she's so ugly" and "i hate her." It made me scared, because I didn't know who would do such a thing, because it looked like it took a lot of time and effort to make the hate video, so this person must hate me A LOT.""  - 15 year-old girl from CA

""I think people who bully should get a life. Seriously i mean what is the point. In life you are not going to like everyone you meet but that doesn't give you an excuse to hurt them. I was once bullied by my so called "friends" they made me feel like crap. I kept it to myself. About 6 months after they started I thought hay there must be a reason they are doing it. So that night i went outside and screamed my loudest 3 times to let all the hatred, guilt, empty feelings out it worked. The next day I had very good mental strength and when the bullies came up to me I said hay leave me alone you know the reason for your attempt to hurt me but why. They didn't answer they were so surprised they walked away after that they left me alone. The moral of this is to have a strong mental mind and you will have the best feeling and the bully/s will leave you be. to all the victims out there stay strong!""  - 13 year-old girl from Australia

""A friend of mine who is still in middle school is currently being harassed online. People are telling her daily to kill herself, and I can see her breaking down more and more. I told her to surround herself with friends and that it is perfectly okay to fall on them when times are hard. Unfortunately the messages she is receiving are anonymous, but her friends are keeping her strong.""  - 14 year-old girl from NY

""Apparently, I look like a panda so kids at my school took it upon themselves to refer to me as panda express and "enjoy" the skateboard brand. At first I would just brush it off but then it genuinely started to get to me. I would go home and cry about it. I was already going through major problems at home but, getting called a panda at school would just make things hell for me. Then I got a form spring where i received comments telling me to go kill myself and that every time i walk the whole earth shakes. I wanted to kill myself. One night i was sitting there on my computer just shaking and crying so bad that i was ready to kill myself. I felt like nothing else mattered and everyone hated me. I had never done anything to these people for them to hate me so much that i don't deserve to be alive and i didn't get it. One day, I went to a concert and met every person i wanted to meet i even got kissed by some band mates I realized that in 10 years these people won't matter at all. I realized they were going to become nothing and by them doing that to me was terrible and that karma would get back at them.""  - 15 year-old girl from NC

""It all started with a silly argument on 'windows live messenger'. Name calling us just it at first. Then they all added there older, tougher friends into the conversation. It began to become scary, the older kids were threatening them. Promising to kill them. They all left the conversation, hoping it was just a joke, and saying: they want touch us. The day after they all got texts, saying: were coming. That's when they started getting worried. More texts came through but just to one now. It's you that we want' it said. They picked the smallest out of the gang, everyone was scared. The walk home from school was normal. No trouble from anyone. They girl went to the park, but some went home. The next day at school she came in with a black eye. 'They got me' she said crying. Cyber bullying is serious." "  - 12 year-old girl from England

""Hello, I have this model called the iPod touch. Over the years i have been cyber bullied with this chatting game called ‘Tap Tap Revenge' i think this is very unacceptable behavior of the bully, I was very upset with this because this specific bully was making funny of my skin color, I personally think that was very mean and cruel.""  - 11 year-old girl from WA

""A boy my daughter has known for years left comments on her Facebook page that was extremely disturbing. He told her (and anyone else readingher wall) that the world would be a better place without him, that all of his pain would be gone and that he was sick and tired of bi--ches lying to him. He wrote several lines of extreme profanity and a graphic sexual comment. One of his last comments was "someone is going to die". Icontacted the local police who called the boy's home phone. The officer contacted me and told me what had happened and that because he could not locate the boy's home address there was nothing further that can be done. I spoke with my daughter and she removed his name from her 'friends' list and told me she would not text him or contact him again. My daughter told me she didn't want this boy to know someone in her family had called the police. She denies being afraid of this boy because she said he always says these kinds of things but he doesn't really mean them. Where do I go from here?""  - 15 year-old girl from WA

""Have been cyber bullied but at the same time sexually harassed online. It started off with things being instant messaged from a boy in my class that was inappropriate but then they got worse. There were vulgar pictures, videos, songs, etc. sent to me. I didn't report him for a year. That was wrong to do, so once they got more threatening and violating i reported him to a teacher and to the police. I had to go to a small trial and he was found guilty i turned out okay but always report cyber bullying.""  - 12 year-old girl from NY

""I had chosen to give my Facebook password to one of my "best friends" she was friends with a girl that i had been having some bullying problems with. One day my "best friend" was at my enemies house and decided to get on my Facebook and delete all my pictures and they took a picture of this boy that i really liked and put it as my profile picture. they wrote "i miss you" "i am in love with you" ";i cry over you all the time" all over my profile. So all my friends saw it. and they also posted a video about me on YouTube saying that i copied their hairstyle (i had it 4 months before them) it was all really stupid but it hurt me so bad.""  - 12 year-old girl from NC

""I was talking to one of my friends on Facebook and I had no idea what was going on. I thought she was my friend but I was wrong. I talked to my parents about it and they told me to do what I thought was right. So I decided to go to my school principal and she called her down we started to talk and she said it was all a lie and that it was her friend. Ever since I was little I have been getting bullied and It caused me to feel bad about myself. I still am getting the same treatment. I asked her if i did something wrong and she just looked at me and walked way. I heard her gossiping about me and saying rude things. I found out that my guy friend was also a part of this. He took one of my pictures off of Facebook and photo shopped it. It hurt me really bad. He shown it to all the guys at my school and all the guys called me a slut a bitch a hooker and a whore. One of the guys kept harassing me and I just did not know what to do.""  - 13 year-old girl from FL

""I'm being harassed nonstop by so called friends from my elementary school, and people I don't even know but somehow they got a hold of my number. I am keep getting name called such as fag, douche bag, small dick, etc.""  - 15 year-old girl from Mississauga, Ontario

""There were bad comments made about my daughter on topix.com that she had been sexually active with several people and she named listed as the topic in my small town. How can topic be stopped. They don't sensor anything that anyone says and this has given my daughter a bad reputation because it's not true.""  - 15 year-old girl from KY

""Well it was Halloween and i stayed at one of my friend's house we when chipy and her mum gave me 1 for a bag of chips. We fell out the next day because she had the same hair style as me. A few weeks later she was sending me text is saying i owe her money if i don't give it her back she will batter me. The money she was talking about was the 1 her mum gave me. She written on Facebook that i am a tramp and i eat like a pig and calling me names all my friends at school fell out with me till they found out the truth.""  - 11 year-old girl from Manchester, UK

""Being bullied makes me feel like I'm worthless i matter to no one everyday i deal with it doesn't get better and people find new ways to intentionally hurt you. Everyone should be aware. Mine started out with a rude comment in kindergarten and is continuing now in the ninth grade. People always have to say something mean to me its become a part of their day. My only regret is wishing i knew what i know now don't worry about what people say too much it will only drive you to who knows what. Bullies are getting smaller everyday i know of a bully who is only in the pre k level. Just because it's not life threat ending doesn't mean its harmless many people make the mistake of not listening to you that's how a problem can be ignored. because no one took my friend seriously, she now resides unknown all because of bullies." "  - 14 year-old girl from NC

""My daughter was not only cyber bullied but our cars in the driveway were defaced and keyed. Phone calls and cell phone texts and every day harassment from two girls in her High school. I spoke with the principal, two assistant principals and the guidance counselor of the school, nothing was done about it because my daughter had deleted the information on her Facebook and her phone so they had nothing, even after one of the bullies confessed to some of it. This caused her to make some choices that affected her future, she is doing better now but her self-esteem is still low.""  - Mother of 16 year-old girl from Boca Raton, FL

""Two of my friends didn't like one of our teachers, and we found out that she was on a dating website. So they created a fake guy that was perfect for the teacher and chatted with her and stuff. They even set up dates with her and then went to the meeting place to watch her get stood-up. They always had the guy come up with some excuse for not making it to the date in order to keep the harassment going. I felt really bad for the teacher when my friends told me what they had been doing, so I told her about it without telling her which students it was because I didn't want my friends to get into trouble. She was really hurt by it...I could see it in her reaction to me telling her. She thanked me and told me that telling her was the right thing to do, but she ended up quitting her job and we had a substitute for the rest of the year, who was absolutely terrible. My friends never got into trouble for it because they were never identified as the culprits. I sometimes think that I should have given up their names, but then they could have done something mean like that to me too. They didn't even know that I told the teacher or that they were the reason that she quit. It was terrible.""  - 14 year-old boy from WI

""I am 13 year old girl who got upset with her best friend and made a very nasty picture of her. it involved her doing untrue sexual things with another girl. i am very ashamed of what i did and i apologized. We are now best friends again and we try to never bring up the horrible incident." "  - 13 year-old girl from NJ

""Ok so i was in class and this girl beside me sent an email to everyone in my class and they were all laughing and i did not know why well people made all kinds of rumors but this girl said that i got a hotdog stuck in me which was so not true but ya know well they sent me emails about it and printed off pics of a hot dog and gave them to me it was the worst thing ever i was so upset and i told the principle and they did nothing is sucked so bad!!""  - 15 year-old boy from NC

""Well, I started a website about the principal and saying how much we hated him. No one ever threatened him but it hurt his feelings. Needless to say, even though I did no wrong, I got in trouble for making the website. Needless to say I don't regret making the website because everything on it was true. He really is a jerk. I do however wish the things that were said about him were said in a nicer way. Now instead of getting expelled I have to write a stupid paper on cyber-bullying. Which is how I got to this website.""  - Boy from USA

""Hi I'm a 13 year old girl and its 2009 this whole year of school i have been getting bullied o this website called Tagged it's a fun website to be on and chat with your friends but when older guys start asking you to put naked pictures on there or starts asking what your body looks like to me it's hard i told them to leave me alone and they have just been harassing me 24/7 it's like I'm a punching bag i hate it they call me slut and whore an I'm sick of it and they even say worse words than that and it makes me want to kill myself bad because i can't take it anymore and i don't think it will ever change sometimes i wish it did though."  - 13 year-old girl from Marysville, OH

""Sometimes I get insulted for no reason because i said my mind so then I get into a fight and feel good when i convince the person/change their perspective/prove I'm right because it shows I have an impact on people. Once I got into a huge fight because these girls were bullying one of my friends and I tried to tell them to stop resulting in them insulting me very badly but me getting insulting them all the same. They made threats to beat her up, what else could I do? They printed out what I said but not what they said and showed the principal. I got in a lot of trouble but talked my way out of it telling the TRUTH (something THEY didn't do) and got let off with a warning.""  - 20 year-old boy from VA

""I was at my house one day and i texted my friend well she said she hated me and she never waned to talk to me again and i asked why and she said because I'm a dumb bad word and had no friends and she said that i was lonely and hated by my parents my family and i got scared when she finally said either go kill yourself or she is going to come kill me by herself or someone else will for her so that night i want to bed my phone off and i turned it on in the morning and there were some more texts from her saying you need to die if you die no one care because everyone hates you finally it got to the point where i did want to kill myself so i blocked her number then got onto my email the next day and she sent me nasty messages and she hacked into my email and sent messages to guy that were so nasty i do not even want to say what she did and from then on i don't know what I'm going to do.""  - 13 year-old girl from Marysville, OH

""I was bullied by these mean girls and they would tell me i don't deserve to live and that was a bitch and they would do all this mean stuff to me at school too.one day when i couldn't take it anymore i thought about committing suicide.""  - 17 year-old girl from NY

""I get bullied every day and i just want to hang myself I'm thinking about it but i doubt i will.""  - 14 year-old boy from USA

""When i was a little bit younger me and my 10 yr. old sister were bullied online what had happened was the person who i though was my best friend had lied and said they were not on a chat room well she ended up giving our phone number to a guy who was way older than us and he called our house it was scary because he called our house asking for my sister." "  - 17 year-old girl from PA

""If you honestly feel that bad about yourself that you feel the need to harass other people...then you need to point blank get a life. If you're religious, then trust in God to give you some self-esteem. If you're not good luck with that. The bottom line is that saying mean things to make yourself good is malicious and idiotic. It only makes you look like a fool and be branded as an oppressor. So if you're one of them and have the AUDACITY to try and justify yourself. Save it for someone who cares because i know for a FACT none of the people here do. It may be wrong to judge but those who commit this crime can't possibly have ANY character whatsoever.""  - 17 year-old boy from USA

""I've never been bullied online, and I've never bullied anyone else online. People chose to use the internet for this because they're too cowardly to say it in front of you so they do it anonymously. If someone's going out of their way to do this, it's because something about you or something you have that they don't is making them so angry that they can't stand to see you happy, they're just compensating for something they don't have by trying to destroy it. E-mail addresses can be changed. Web site administrators can track IP addresses which can be used to locate the computer used to post that message. Keep log files of their offenses as evidence, report it to someone (parent, teacher, police), nobody will just stand by and allow this to happen and these people can be found and will be dealt with seriously. Don't let yourself just be a victim thinking nobody can do anything because it's online, don't do nothing in hopes it will go away. Don't give them the satisfaction of getting upset and yelling at them. Solve the problem in the real world, don't give them the satisfaction by responding to what they say.""  - 17 year-old boy from Canada

""My story begins when a mother of one of my daughter's friends called me concerning two girls bullying our daughters at school. She began to explain that other girls have said that there was stuff written about her daughter on MySpace, and since she had no internet, she asked if I could investigate. When I went into the MySpace pages and started to read some things, I discovered that this one girls (one who bully's) had written about killing my daughter! I copied all of this right away so I could be armed with the information when I took it to the police station! They didn`t make a report. They sent me to the school and now the wheels are in action (I hope) for something to be done to punish these girls. I need some information on the cyber bulling law (if there is one) so I my plan my next step of action. I feel this girl should be punished for threatening my daughter's life. This is NOT a case of "girls just being girls"!!! I need to know what to do and where to go from here.""  - Mother from USA

""My friends don't want me around and i have invaded their privacy by bebo and found out that they hate me but feel sorry for me and bitch about me. Everything i say to them goes around my school. They have taken over my bebo account more than once and sent messages around saying that i had a sex change when i went on holidays. They are the only people in my class that i hang around with and i don't want to lose them but i have become depressed and suicidal and am afraid that if I'm pushed over the edge then it will be too late.""  - 16 year-old girl from USA

""My daughter was the target of cyber bullying. Although it occurred only once on the computer, I still consider it bullying. A group of girls downloaded her MySpace pictures and wrote hateful and obscene comments about her. They then sent it out to all of their friends. People began calling our home and telling us about the site. As soon as I called one of the parents, the web page began deleting--but not before a friend printed a copy of the first page of it. I didn't get all of it, but I got enough. These same girls continue to make references to my daughter on line, without actually saying her name, but we know they are talking about her. The worst part is that none of the parents will hold their daughters accountable because only one actually did the typing. We are left angry, hurt, and paranoid about what these girls will do next. These people were supposed to be friends, but one got mad at my daughter and then a group of these girls just thought it would be funny to make this web page. What recourse is there? That's what I'd like to know.""  - Mother from USA

""Hi - someone in the chat room that I frequent has been sending instant messages to my friends, telling them false things about me - for instance, I was told I called a friend from the chat room a "drunk" and a "dope head" - I smoothed that one over, but, this person has also taken to calling people at HOME and telling them to put me on "Iggy" and to not talk to me - she has also accused me of stalking HER, of reporting people to yahoo (which I have NOT done) - of paying for a search for her and her husband (again, NOT done, I DID do my research on a chat engine, to cover MY bases in this issue - but, it was all out there and available on the internet, public information). What recourse do I have to STOP her from doing this all the time? I mean, I spend HOURS in pm's explaining to people what I have not done, I have people mad at me, this is getting ridiculous, I have been coming IN this certain chat room for almost six years, she has been coming in there for 2. Please help! Don't tell me to just put her on ignore, she just pm's people with more lies, and I still hear about it, I want her to STOP. ""  - 17 year-old girl from USA

""My child struggles with her weight. In whom she thought was two of her best friends she confided her weight during a sleep over and the next day it was posted on their bebo sight. How cruel can kids be. Anyhow, I see profanity and slam every day on the internet while kids are so called chatting, as a parent my kids know that i am going to step in and read what is going on at any given minute. More should do so.""  - Mother from USA

""This one time this girl that was a lot bigger than me made me cries when i talked to her online because she told me if she saw me in school she was going to stuff me in a locker and that no one was going to find me for a very long time. I faked sick for a week and a half until i found the courage deep inside me to go to school. Nothing bad even happened. I was really relieved.""  - 18 year-old boy from NY

""Cyber bullying sounds interesting and I wasn't aware of that until I learnt it in class so I did bully some kid because he had pissed me off. I didn't know the damages can be that severe but what I did served him right, keeping him on his toes as he seemed real tough and rude outside but inside he was nothing but a chicken and I did what he deserved although I personally don't support cyber bullying.""  - 14 year-old boy from USA

""Hello i came out of the closet and not have my parents bullied me but many of the people at my school and many of the nuns in my parish have cyber bullied me and said i was committing a sin. But it's not my fault i love her.""  - 13 year-old girl from USA

""I hate how AOL is a place for haters. I always go this certain chat room and I've been doing it since I was 14 years old. I don't know why I even started, because all I face is people who tease me, ex-boyfriends from online who side with my enemies and people who criticize my looks. I'm often told in real life that I'm very pretty, but when I go online people tell me otherwise, like I have a big nose or other things wrong with me. I finally know that none of this is true, and that the person doing it has issues with themselves.""  - 15 year-old girl from USA

""I would like my story to be anonymous. I am a 14 year old girl who has been called fat online for many years. One day i was talking to my friend that i was pregnant. She sent the conversation to everyone and soon enough everyone called me pregnant. I got kicked out of school and i started to cut myself. i was admitted to a hospital and spent 5 months in intensive care until my baby was born. Cyber bullying ruined my life.""  - 14 year-old girl from USA

""When i was 13, i started dating a boy from the next town over and apparently a girl from that town had a huge crush on him and was very upset with me when she found out that i was dating him. She started yelling at me and threatening me over msn instant messenger. She scared me so much and when i would try to block her address, she would just create a new profile and continue where she left off. It got to the point where i was scared to go to see my boyfriend in his town because i was scared of running into her and what she would do to me. I am from Ohio.""  - 14 year-old girl from OH

""Being bullied really upset me. I hated the fact that people started to turn against me when I did absolutely nothing. Now I am a stronger person and I do not let anyone bother me. I just am myself no matter what. Always know that God is with you.""  - 15 year-old boy from NY

""Please call me re:post on an ADULTs MySpace blog with a minor girls picture - with the word 'whore' written over it - it was up for approx. a week than the girls face was 'whited out' but still appears on site ""  - Adult woman from USA

""People tell me that i am not good enough for my boyfriend and they mail me saying that they are going to kill me if i don't break up with him and i really love him so i don't want to break up with him""  - 13 year-old girl from TN

""People get bullied on the net all the time, if you can call it that. Only a fool would be hurt by it, everyone knows it's all done for the lulz." "  - 16 year-old boy from USA

""I think it is wrong to be bullied over the computer. When I watched a movie in my health class a boy committed suicide by hanging himself from the shower i thought i was going to cry. And I didn't even know him but he was only 13 years old. My message is don't bully or hurt anybody else and don't commit suicide. If you are bullied tell somebody. Yes i was bullied over the internet and it hurt and i agree that sticks and stones make break my bones and names will never hurt me is a lie because names hurt especially when it is about your image like getting called fat. It is just wrong and i may have bullied but not on purpose and i regret everything i said so talk to someone if you're getting bullied and if you're a bully then STOP your hurting people!!!!!!!!!!!""  - 13 year-old boy from USA

""My name Monique i know how it feels to be bullied i have all my life but now I've became a peer mentor its where u give information out to people younger than u that needs your advice I'm aged 15 i wanted to help people like other people helped me i love what i do because I've experienced it myself""  - 15 year-old girl from Canada

""I know what it feels like to get bullied it is not fun and although people who get bullied bully people back it is still not right so please don't bully and keep safe 4-ever & always!!!!!!!!!!!!<3 love is the key not hate<3<3<3<3<3""  - 12 year-old from USA

""There is a website called www.g00ns.net and there objective is to do are Cyber Bullying Online, Destroying and Hacking other Server Properties. Is there any rule that we have the rights to sue them and bring them to court. If you read regards to the information is there objective is to do a lot of online terrorism. I have a Server and they just destroy all of the Menus. I set my security in to high. However, they can still get in my server and ruin everything.""  - 18 year-old boy from USA

""I guess somewhere around where i live some kid committed suicide because he was being cyber bullied. I can't imagine what was going through his mind. Then the other day my friend was being bullied around and getting her computer hacked into and people that think they need to prove something or get equal with someone need to rethink it. Just forget about their insecurities and try to understand what they are going through because one day your payback might cost them their lives.""  - 14 year-old boy from USA

""I remember it like it was yesterday, they called me names of which I could never feel comfortable with. It was already hard enough to deal with my sexuality but then they had to make it even tougher with names such as "fag", "gay boy", "Michael Jackson's b****". It was just too much to deal with and I even felt like killing myself at one point.""  - 17 year-old boy from USA

""My daughter came home from school yesterday with some very disturbing news. Someone had gotten the password to her Yahoo account and sent sexually explicit e-mails to her friends, teacher, and family members. This is the first time we have dealt with this so I'm not sure what actions to take, but we've got a meeting scheduled with the school and I have contacted the police and I'm waiting for the investigators to call me back. If anyone could give me some advice I would greatly appreciate it.""  - Father from USA

""Some people write mean things about me and they don't think I will find out, or they will make sure I will see it, it is so mean. They call me fat, ugly, nasty and i just hate how they treat me!!!"  - 13 year-old boy from USA

""I have never actually experienced anything having to do with cyber bullying directly, but from what examples and stories listed in various places, I can tell this problem grows with the intensity and consequences of all other problems surrounding young people today. I wholeheartedly support efforts to abolish these senseless, demeaning acts.""  - 16 year-old girl from USA

""I am now home schooled because i was so badly harassed for being bisexual I'm dealing with my problems now but it still sucks that i can't go to a normal high school because of my sexual orientation the worst part is that i would actually convenience myself that these people were right and it got to me so bad that i was 50 one 50ed for cutting my wrist i know now that there comments don't and didn't matter and i wish someone would have told me that a long time ago.""  - 18 year-old girl from USA

""My daughter was devastated to discover a website called the I hate....(her name ) website on Bebo. It took us 5 months for Bebo to acknowledge that the site was willful bullying because they have so many sites. As it was an overseas site her education dept. in Qld stated they could not order it to be removed. The contents were so disgusting that when Bebo kept asking for more details we pasted the entire webpage and sent it, within 28 hrs. it was removed. Why doesn't Bebo screen the contents of each page? Because there are too many, thus the bullies have found the perfect way to bully until someone dies over this (suicide or murder as my daughter wanted to do) then there'll be an enquiry! Why have these free websites anyway? What moral, ethical and uplifting purpose do they serve?""  - Adult woman from USA

""I never realized how dangerous MySpace could be...It was foolish of me to put that suggestive picture of me in my bikini up. One day a guy sent me a message saying that he wanted to "do it" with me, and if I didn't he would tell everyone at school that I'm a little whore...I called the police after crying all day and talking to my parents.""  - 15 year-old girl from Canada

""I use to be cyber bullied; it makes you feel cared and vulnerable. I didn't like the feeling at all. The girl that was doing it got all of her friends to gang up on me and harassed me at school and posted embarrassing pictures of me online. I believe children chose to cyber bully because you aren't really talking to the person, you are writing. It isn't as scary to write something and not to look at them. I believe cyber bullying should be stopped before it led to scary situations than the ones that we've heard of.""  - 18+ year-old girl from USA

""I'm Nicole I'm in 1st year / 10 grade i get bullied by these girls at school they found out my msn and bullied me every time i block them they found new ways to bully me one day i told someone and it changed everything the girls can't go on the computer anymore and I'm so happy that i told.""  - 14 year-old girl from USA

""My daughter was informed that a website was developed about her. When we visited this awful site, I sent her out of the room and read all the horrible comments and untrue stories they had made-up about her. She is ten years old and a sweet person with a big heart. She is trying not to let this bother her, but honestly how does one do that? It is difficult for me to understand how someone could be so hurtful. Why would you spend the time to create an entire webpage full of ugly things to hurt someone?""  - Adult woman from USA

""My friend started bullying me online ever since the summer had begun. She'd been calling me an ADD freak, sped ("special ed" for short), lesbian, and gave me credit for writing the worst songs ever made. She said she rocked, she was so good, and I was so terrible at guitar. Now the upcoming party on my schedule, might give me a chance to grab a microphone and give away the horrible secret of this girl.""  - 13 year-old girl from CA

""October 9, 2006 my 17-year old niece, Rachael Neblett, took her own life after being bullied and stalked on MySpace. Six months after her death, Rachael's close friend, Kristin Settles, also committed suicide from depression. So, in an indirect way the bully cause two teenage deaths and destroyed two families. The families, along with community members in Mt Washington, KY have created a non-profit organization to spread awareness of cyber bulling and suicide. Our website is www.makeadifferenceforkids.org""  - Father of 17 year-old girl from Mt. Washington, KY

""Whenever I speak my mind on the internet I am bullied for it. I have many hobbies that I like to share and I am put down for them. It makes me want to throw those hobbies away because it has been happening ever since I started posting my work on the internet. I get bullied for the way I look and for what I like to do. Just because I am not as good as some people out there at my hobby doesn't mean you have to bug me about it until I give up.""  - 22 year-old girl from Canada

""Being bullied, whether in person or online, can make you feel horrible. I know it made me feel terrible. It lowered my self-esteem, and I can still remember the painful words that were said to me. Personally, I don't know if I'll ever recover from the emotional blows. Other times, I would just become a target for speaking my mind, and receive instant messages with nasty comments. For a long time, I've believed that there's some good in everyone, but now I am not so sure.""  - 18 year-old girl from USA

""Well i was talking on MSN on time this girl msn me saying that I'm gay, ugly and worthless. That made me feel so horrible inside....like I'm actually worthless. But i talked to my mum about and she made me feel happy.""  - 14 year-old boy from New Zealand

""This one guy in my school was bothering me, it involved blackmail (once using the private messaging system in an MMORPG), extortion, threats, name calling, slander, and many other things.""  - 15 year-old boy from USA

""I was good friends with a boy before i moved, once i started to email him he began to be very cruel and i cried a lot because we were really close before i left ... i gathered up the courage to tell him how he made me feel and his response was that because he couldn't see me he felt more at ease saying what he really felt - let me tell everyone out there that in the outside world we don't sat things for a reason, people's feelings. If you can't say it to my face don't say it at all.""  - 14 year-old girl from USA

""I used to be best friends with these two girls. Let's call them B and C. One day, B emailed me and said to check out this cool website. I went on and found that it was all about me. It said that I was a loser, a bad friend, an idiot and a backstabber. When I emailed B back she started saying that she didn't write that, it was all C but that it was funny and all so true. I then emailed C and she said it was all B. At that point, I just said "Forget it" and I stopped hanging out with them. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.""  - 16 year-old girl from USA

""I am a 12 year old boy from Canada being bullied it makes me feel really sad and mad they call me names I need help I don't know what to do any more.""  - 12 year-old boy from Canada

""One person has been harassing me on my aim instant messages and she has been using seven different screen name I blocked all of them and she always kept put new screen name to aim me.... she even harassed on my daughter (12 years old) for no reason... What do I do? Should I report cop about that?""  - Adult woman from USA

""A kid was sending my son emails on MySpace and saying that we were going to kill u and they kept doing then someone broke in to our house but it was one of Billys friends.""  - 13 year-old boy from USA

""I have never been harassed but I'm scared it's going to happen...i heard that people get their pictures taken and videos are being made when you are changing in the locker room when you don't know it and I'm kind of paranoiac but that so now i go and change in the bathroom stalls. I hope I'm not going to get my picture taken when i don't know it...signed unknown from Cali...""  - 15 year-old girl from CA

""Hi i have been teased and gossiped about my weight and face and its really sad Because the Girls who bully me because they are jealous""  - 13 year-old girl from USA

""Yes, i am a mother of a 21 yr. Old daughter, who has 2 beautiful baby boys and a boyfriend. The oldest boy's dad is crazy and has been sending text containing verbal harm messages and even a text holding a gun and a message to the boyfriend and just wanted to know what we should do. i worry about the babies""  - 21 year-old girl from USA

""I got bullied for being popular. you wouldn't think it would happen and neither did i, but i got targeted for having boyfriends other girls wanted and for going out with guys other guys were jealous of. People disliked me because i was happy with myself. Looking back i guess they wanted the self-confidence i HAD. it hurt but i lay low. i guess it got better, but of course there is the event of them never forgetting what they said about you in the first place, i still deal with that today.""  - 14 year-old girl from Australia

""Being bullied on websites on YouTube makes me sick since they can post rude comments and make hate videos to humiliate you there nothing but a bunch of stupid high school jocks.""  - 23 year-old girl from NM

""When i was in first grade there was this girl who bother me a lot she call me names and also tell me that my mom was fat and a slut it makes me feel bad and every time she told me that i cry and the kids laugh at me." "  - 14 year-old girl from Middletown, NY

""I was talking to this girl on msn, we never met before but my cousin knew her. She started bullying me and saying I'm a spoilt brat, i need a new life, and my life is soooo miserable. I started to say things back to her, it really did NOT help. I'm not that strong in religion, so she started to say I'm going to go to hell and i will live an even horrible life if i don't believe in god. She was saying more stuff to me that i don't even think I should put down. It lowered my self-esteem, i couldn't stop think about it. I don't think i should have said anything back, it just made thing worse... But it is tempting to say something back. I suggest you block them straight away, even if you do really like them, because they will just do it again and again and again.""  - 11 year-old boy from Australia

""Well once i was on MySpace and this kid started saying bad words and he said that he was going to kill me i was scared.""  - 12 year-old girl from Goshen, IN

""My old friend KC cyber bullied me all the time she would cuss me out and say really hurtful thing one day she texted me and said she was going to tell everyone my secret i was scared outta my mind she was going to tell my friends i was on medication for HIV then i told my mom about it and she told her mom and she told me that she would never do it again but we were never friends again.""  - 15 year-old girl from Daytona Beach, FL

""My ex-friend was telling everyone online that i was a fag and said that i didn't deserve to live everyone made fun of me and wanted to kill myself it hurt so bad but i switched schools last year and gotten better.""  - 17 year-old boy from NY

""I think everyone has cyber bullied, with or without realizing. And that is okay...if it doesn't go too far and you learn from your mistakes. Well in truth, I was a cyber-bully. I thought it was just fun and harmless since they never seemed to be hurt. After a while though, I felt guilty and I didn't know why. Then I heard of cyber bullying and I knew I was doing it. I quit then and there, with apologies and left those websites. Later on though, I became the victim. I was on a website, and some people I didn't know seemed to just choose me to target. They weren't really threatening, just annoying. After a while it got worse and worse and worse, and finally I snapped and got them reported to the websites moderators, and then I left that website as well. What I have learned? You can use the internet for good and bad, but the worse you use it for, the worse you will feel.""  - 12 year-old boy from USA

""I don't like any form of bullying at all. I am bullied every day at my school and I don't even get a break. A few days ago I even got a trash can put over my head and then they started kicking it. I HAVE BULLIED ALL OF MY LIFE AND NEVER AMITTED IT. That hurts me more than the bully's because that is the main reason my self-esteem is very low." "  - 13 year-old girl from TX

""I've had my Facebook for 3 or so years. i woke up one morning and someone had clearly hacked it. My name was whora cum-stain, and there were some very hurtful things posted about me on there. The internet is a clear target for someone to get hurt. It's clearly very easy to access your information. I don't have a Facebook anymore and I'm starting to appreciate not having one. I never want to go through that again.""  - 16 year-old girl from Canada

""I was bullied at school all those years ago. I still feel powerless and afraid of those people, I still feel they are better than me, have more than me etc. I still feel like I'm a loser who is a doormat. I hope I can stop feeling like this one day, but I see these people and I feel afraid again.""  - 41 year-old man from Australia

""This happened a few months ago maybe early September. A friend of mine slept over my house and asked to use my cell phone. I gave it to her and she began texting someone. I took back my phone and began texting whoever it was thinking it was a guy. But no it was some girl. We began fighting through texts and she began calling me some nasty names. I felt so horrible i wanted to kill myself after what the girl said to me.""  - 13 year-old girl from PA

""Well i was best best friends with this girl and i never knew that she was bullying my other friends so i always hung around her and i had no idea what was going on behind the scenes and if my friends told me what was happening i would just tell them she doesn't do that she's nice then a few months later everyone got really mad at me and i was so sad then she ganged up on me and was hurting me in horrible ways i can't count how many times i cried, after i realized what was happening my friends stopped being mean to me but that ex-friend is still horrible and i always felt like saying something mean to her but my mum always said "write it and delete it " so i didn't ever send anything bad to her but she sends me nasty Emails, I have told lots of teachers but because she always acts like a goody-2-shoes they won't believe me and won't tell her this is wrong to be mean. So please everyone who has bullied think about this and what i have said.""  - 11 year-old girl from Australia

""My name is Donna Faye Witsell. My daughter is Hope Sterling Witsell. She of course as you already know made the BIG mistake of sending a nude photo of herself to a boy she liked and trusted. That was not the beginning of her being cyber bullied. There is much more to Hope's story than what has been public at this point. I appreciate what you are doing. If I can be of any help to you know that, I have a new mission for the rest of my life. That is to be Hope's Voice and do whatever I can to help others to know that there is Hope and suicide is NEVER the answer.""  - Parent of 13 year-old girl from FL

""About two years ago, I was cyber bullied. Former friends of mine posted hate blogs, and most recently I found a YouTube video of them burning my picture with the theme song of I hope you die. The funny thing is the video was posted nearly two years ago. The scary thing is, even though I survived it. I pray that my college professors will not look up my name. If they do they will find it. To me this is a serious concept. I flirted with the idea of taking my own life during the time. That's the thing. Information spreads fast. With me it was no different. I was being attacked in my own living room.""  - 16 year-old bo from USA

""I get a haircut. And I'm a cheerleader and i get lots of layers, i tease them and i thought that they looked really cool. The next day i go to school wearing skinny jeans and neon stuff you know, the works. About 3 days later, i get an email witch is making me want to die. It says quote, That doesn't mean cut yourself because of your pathetic ugliness. It means stop and be your old seventh grade self, not some raging popularity whore you think people like. I hate myself. i don't know how this happened. This isn't making any sense. I don't get how this happened; i don't even know this person. Now everyone hates me. I never did anything for this to happen. I just want to die. After hearing how ugly and stupid i am i never want to do anything anymore. I have no confidence and i have been broken down from head to toe.""  - 13 year-old girl from MN

""Well I've noticed that this kind of thing doesn't get that much notice it's sad. As of right now i am thinking about killing myself i created a twitter account and at first everything was fine until i ran across some people who don't like girls who consider themselves "Barbie's" at the time i didn't but they started using my @ name in everything saying that I was ugly and a lot of mean things i ended up blocking them and reporting them but i don't think they take this type of thing serious enough. i have a few screen shots of the things these guys started saying about me that was pretty much the last straw.. I'm trying to hold on but I'm pretty much done with this life. Jesus is taking too long and I'm ready to leave. I just don't want to take my own life and end up in hell.""  - 17 year-old girl from Clinton, NC

""Our daughter has been bullied since the 4th grade. Back then the bullying included everything from giving her the 'stare' down', giving her the silent treatment, (she would often eat lunch alone and go an entire day at school with not one girl in her grade speaking to her), and magnets placed on her school locker saying 'cry baby' stay home etc. It has progressively gotten worse over the years, and although I am so proud that she wasn't afraid of sharing her pain with me from the beginning, as soon as I contacted the school for support the bullying got worse. Recently, it has involved cyber-bullying in horrible hurtful ways through text messaging. Again, I have contacted the school because the text messages are being sent to other students about my daughter during the school day. I have asked to meet with the principal and have yet to have received a response. I also went on-line and pulled up the school policy manual. Sadly, it has not been updated since 2003. I think many school are at risk for potential serious lawsuits if they do not take this seriously, as my daughter is only one of thousands of young people who are being bullied. Has my daughter been affected by this? WITHOUT A DOUBT. She has been in therapy because like so many of you know and are aware; WORDS do affect people and often in extremely severe ways. Not everyone can 'brush it off' and move on, and they shouldn't have to. I know firsthand that if an anti-bullying committee would ever to be set up at this school, the girls doing the cyber-bullying would be sitting in the front row. I say these sarcastically because the one's doing the bullying are blindly loved by teachers who don't have a clue what is going on. Having procedures and punishments in school for using a cell phone or computer to bully other students should not be an option to school administrators, it should be required. I strongly think though in this small state that often is so slow in everything...that it sadly will take a suicide for something positive to happen.""  - Parent of 17 year-old girl from ND

""You people that are being bullied need to stop listening to other people i truly think it's not rite and the bullies need to stop... Because just in case they haven't notice there has been a major increase of teens suiciding them self's... It breaks my heart when i here that teens or even adults are suiciding them self's because, they are getting made fun of or are getting picked on whatever the reason it breaks my heart when i here that people have killed themselves because of it. Also because of the bulling people have gone to the extreme they have gone and killed people at their school like for example the columbine high school massacre... that occurred in 1998 i believe it was these 2 students that got picked on and they took matters the wrong way. Well you guys can research it if you guys are interested i recommend you guys do especially those bullies out there to see what that can cause people to do. But i believe that these two boys were crying out for help but no one would listen. Well there's much more i have to say but don't want to write a whole page on here but if you guys feel the need to talk to someone here's my email address we all have things we need to let go. It can be about anything problems with family anything I'm a person that is here to listen and help you" "  - 16 year-old girl from Corcoran, CA

""When i was in high school, i went through an extremely rough time. When i first arrived to high school on the first day of grade 8 i was excited, nervous and scared (in the end, i was scared for all the right reasons). My friends from primary school said that i would hang out with them on the first day. However when push came to shove, the girls that were so called my friends, found another group of girls on the first day to hang out with, and i was left with nobody. Just me, all alone on the first day of high school. I met up with a girl called Shannon* on that first day as she was in my home room class. She was nice and invited me to hang out with her and her group. Little did i know what i was getting myself into? Weeks went by and the girls were discussing topics i had not even discussed with my parents before.. Sex, boys (the things i just was not into at the time. Peer pressure got the better of me. They were all teasing me because i had not had sex and i didn't have my period. I wasn't classified as one of them, because i didn't have my period. I felt left out. So i pretended to have my period so the teasing stopped. That weekend i was invited out to a party, and i begged my parents to let me go, because i was struggling to make friends. "Yes as long as your home by ten". My heart raced with excitement. I met Shannon and the girls at this person place and i was amazed to see things i had never even imagined. Drugs, sex and a whole lot of craziness." Try some pot" Shannon said. "No thanks, not really interested". She punched me in the face, a range of anger bursted out of her. "Try it, or u mas well leave". (If i had known then what i know now, i would have just left. I tried it and the effects were that bad i was taken to hospital. Shannon had punched me so hard across the face, i had internal bleeding to my brain and the effects of the pot made me out of control. These girls made me cut my hair, try drugs, drink excessively and have sex early in life- just so i could be accepted. Girls, and boys, DONT FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO BE ACCEPTED WITHIN A GROUP, BE YOURSELF AND DO NOT LET PEER PRESSURE GET THE BETTER OF YOU. That is my story, and i am just hoping somebody out there can read this, and find that you don't have to do everything to suit everybody else. Be true to yourself.""  - 17 year-old girl from Australia

""I had a huge crush on this really popular guy. Shy, plump girl with glasses and acne. I started to contact him through AIM hoping for a magical ending. Then later I talked to his friends and to make a long story very short. I was harassed and teased through Facebook and AIM, told I was ugly, fat, no guy would ever like me, that I was a female dog, to go cut myself, and even received death threats. Granted, I reacted and said things I would never usually say, but since that year I always think a part of me has died and I will never be as I was before. Did the school do anything to help? Did my parents understand that Facebook was my connection to the rest of the school? An addiction? It's so stupid, as I look back on it, and I know I made mistakes, but no one deserves to be verbally and mentally abused via the internet or anywhere else.""  - 15 year-old girl from USA

""So it all started in the middle of my 8th grade year and everything seemed like it was going great. I met some friends from my dad's neighborhood and became really close friends with these boys. Some of my friends also began talking to them and we all became really good friends. On day at school one of my close friends came up to me and ask if the rumor about me was true? I told her i didn't know what she was talking about. She explained to me that the there was a rumor going around about me that I put peanut butter on my private parts and my dog licked it off. It was the most disgusting thing I have ever heard and I couldn't even bare the tears that were running down my face. That entire day people kept calling me "peanut butter girl" and asking if it was true. People even threw peanut butter crackers at my lunch table. That year was probably the worst and I cried most of that year. I didn't tell my parents at first because I was embarrassed and thought it would just blow over and everything would be fine next year at high school. Well I was wrong it was stuck with me for all 3 years of high school and it is just never ending. Yeah sure it has died down and people have forgotten about it but there are just some people who will never let it go. I am now in my 3 year of high school and it is half way over and people still tend to bring it up once in a while. And it has gotten to a point where there is nothing I can do about it and i just try to ignore them. I am almost finished with high school and hopefully it won't follow me to college. If anything like this happens to you don't be afraid to tell someone because hopefully you will be able to catch the person who started it. But that's the thing about cyber bullying no one really knows that started it. That's my story and it is horrifying and terrible but i have gotten through it and hopefully it will die down and people will be able to grow up.""  - 16 year-old girl from Ohio

""I had this boy who used to like me. But I never liked him. So one day I asked my friend to help get him off my back. We invited him into this chat room and started talking about him. And at first he was defensive, then angry, then sad. He soon logged off. A few months later I learned about the pain of cyber bullying...and he admitted that he was so depressed about that day that he thought on suicide.""  - 16 year-old girl from IL

""Miley a girl at my school. Posted something on MySpace that said "I'm going to bring a knife to school and kill Sarah" Later on that say the girl got arrested. She really brought a knife to school! A few days before this happened Miley and Sarah got into a fight and Sarah one. Throughout the day Sarah bragged about it. Then it lead to the comment on MySpace. Sarah would have died if someone hadn't stepped up! ALWAYS TELL SOMEONE IF YOU ARE BEING CYBER BULLIED! You might end up committing suicide! THESE NAME WERE NOT REAL I MADE THEM UP SO INFORMATION WOULDN'T GET PUTOUT!""  - 11 year-old girl from USA

""THERE WAS A PROBLEM WITH A GIRL STEALING MY iPod AND MY DAD DECIDED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT ONCE I GOT THE iPod BACK THE GIRL GOT ME AFTER SKOOL THE BULLYING CONTINUES BUT I HOPE SOMTHING WIL BE DONE ABOUT IT ...THERE IS SOME CYBERBULLING INCLUDED.""  - 13 year-old girl from Orange County, CA

""Funny how sometimes you think the worse bullies are girls. Try guys. I spent my birthday with 3 of my guy-friends. All three of them are against me. I can't anything without being told I'm stupid, etc. I can respond sarcastically, I can't respond playfully, I can't respond seriously. Everything is open for interpretation and I'll always look bad, no matter what.""  - 17 year-old boy from Quebec

""When i first joined Facebook i went on an app called bathroom wall... i honestly thought it was just a place where people talked about random stuff, but boy was i wrong. It turns out it is a app designed specifically for gossip. I figured that out when i went on once and there was a chat group about me. it said up to 30 mean and hateful things, and at some points i just cried and cried, wondering what in the world i had ever done. the worst part was that it was all from " anonymous" senders. I remember quite clearly feeling horribly alone and i hope it'll never happen again.""  - 12 year-old girl from Canada

""When i first got Facebook my friend helped me get it . She already had it and told me a good password i used it. Big mistake. The first year of middle school. She told the guy she liked my password and he went on my Facebook and wrote things like "I'm lesbian" or " I like Robert Pattinson" and more hurtful things my mom checked my profile and saw someone wrote that, knowing that i would never would do that she told me and i changed my password and about a week later i found out it was her. The she convinced my other friend that they weren't going to be my friend anymore. They turned almost everyone against me and i am having a hard time.""  - 11 year-old girl from Canada

""This guy is really freaking me out; he says he wants to have sex with me on yahoo messenger. He keeps talking to me and i keep telling him to leave me alone. He goes to the other school, but my ex-friend is really mean and she told him where i live. I'm really scared that he is going to try to rape me now that he knows where I live. He really scares me on yahoo messenger and he won't leave me alone.""  - 15 year-old girl from USA

""There was this girl who would try and ruin my life everyday online. By creating a fake account and make up some horrible lies about me. We had been best friends for years until she got really jealous and back stabbed me. I told my parents about it right away and I had a little help from my sister and got her to leave me alone by having a my fake lawyer call her and tell her that she could really go to jail. Then she stopped doing it.""  - 17 year-old girl from ME

""Recently, I was very much hurt by cyberbullying. This guy I know, let's call him Tom, started to IM me. He said that his friend was over, let's call him Joe. And then, randomly, Joe starts insulting me. He calls me a loser and that I look like a potato. He curses and I feel like crying. The hurt was so real that I felt like throwing up. I hate IMing people now because I am scared of this kind of hurt.""  - 12 year-old girl from NY

""Well, I myself was never cyber-bullied, but I know that in most cases, it's from someone you know in either school or public. Also, I know that most kids online aren't even old enough to be on.""  - 14 year-old girl from PA

""My daughter was informed that a website was developed about her. When we visited this awful site, I sent her out of the room and read all the horrible comments and untrue stories they had made-up about her. She is ten years old and a sweet person with a big heart. She is trying not to let this bother her, but honestly how does one do that? It is difficlut for me to understand how someone could be so hurtful. Why would you spend the time to create an entire webpage full of ugly things to hurt someone?""  - Woman from unknown location

""Whenever I speak my mind on the internet I am bullied for it. I have many hobbies that I like to share and I am put down for them. It makes me want to throw those hobbies away because it has been happening ever since I started posting my work on the internet. I get bullied for the way I look and for what I like to do. Just because I am not as good as some people out there at my hobby doesn't mean you have to bug me about it until I give up." "  - 22 year-old girl from Canada

""Well I was talking on MSN one time...this girl messaged me saying that I'm gay, ugly and worthless. That made me feel so horrible inside....like I'm actually worthless." "  - Girl from New Zealand

""Being bullied, whether in person or online, can make you feel horrible. I know it made me feel terrible. It lowered my self-esteem, and I can still remember the painful words that were said to me. Personally, I don't know if I'll ever recover from the emotional blows. Other times, I would just become a target for speaking my mind, and receive instant messages with nasty comments. For a long time, I've believed that there's some good in everyone, but now I am not so sure.""  - 18 year-old girl from the Northwest

""I signed her up for a bunch of dating services and used my cell phone to take a picture of her in class and posted it on the web.""  - 16 year-old girl from NY

""When I was a little bit younger, me and my 10 year-old sister were bullied online. What had happened was the person who I thought was my best friend had lied and said they were not on a chat room. Well, she ended up giving our phone number to a guy who was way older than us and he called our house...and it was scary because he called our house asking for my sister.""  - 17 year-old girl from PA

""I was brought out for being a bisexual and made fun of, being told that I'm against God's will and am going to hell.""  - 17 year-old boy from Canada

""Someone sent me numerous emails with like two words in the email like 'your gay' 'your dumb' and that kind of stuff. When I am bullied (which is infrequently) I am called homosexual or gay so I'm used to it but it still hurts.""  - 14 year-old boy from Canada

""Sometimes I just feel ignored by my friends on chats. I'm sure it's just that they've got other people to talk to, and I totally understand that. It just makes me feel weird sometimes, but I'm a very talkative person, so that's probably why I felt a little sad. I'm passive though, so I probably won't say anything about it.""  - 15 year-old boy from NM

""This girl I used to have a crush on but later realized I didn't like her said some very rude things about me. She made a list of the bad things about me and the good things about her, and put it on her Livejournal (online journal) for me to see. She had moved away, so our only means of communication was computer. We argued because I am straight edge and she's does drugs. She said that all these people hated me and that I should do drugs. She said that because I once told her I felt sorry for her (she had a lot of family problems and I knew drugs weren't the answer) and she took it the wrong way.""  - 16 year-old boy from CA

""I was talking to someone in a chatroom and they started telling me things. Like was I really that stupid and making fun of me. I told them privately to please stop and they wouldn't. They then told me they were going to harm me and I was scared because I don't know how but they knew where I lived. I am scared sometimes. One time someone made me feel so bad that I wanted to kill myself because I believe those things that they said. My friends calmed me down and told me not to do anything dumb. I dislike it when people spread rumors online about you and it has happened to mostly everyone who chats.""  - 17 year-old boy from CA

""I have never been a victim of being bullied online, but I once had a friend who was being bullied online. He was so angry and sad and he had every right to be. The kid couldn't even go online without being bombarded with degrading messages. He didn't want to read e-mails because of all the degrading ones.""  - 

""One of my friends started hassling me on MSN messenger. She was sending me nasty messages and text messages and this carried on at school. I told my parents, my friends, and a teacher. She was spoken to a few times but it still carries on a bit now but not as bad because I have blocked her online. This really affected me at home and at school. I couldn't concentrate on school work and I was always upset and down. Now I just ignore it and get on with it. I have plenty more friends and I don't need her anymore. Maybe one day she will give up and grow up.""  - 15 year-old girl from Canada

""Random people I've never met before will flame my friends and I (that is, send is nasty, disrespectful messages) through the various different forms of online communication simply because they disagree with something I/we like (such as a webpage we made in honor of say... a certain character, or something).""  - 15 year-old girl from AZ

""I think that it is not right and that people need to have respect for other people as in the saying treat others how you would like to be treated. The people that do bully people just want to show of how much bigger and cooler they think they are. Bullying isn't just threatening or any thing else, it is spreading rumors and like sending mean messages with threats in them. If that does happen you should either block their email address, save them and call a local police to come and read it (they could serve time for hate mail). But one of the things you should not do is RESPOND TO THE HATE MAIL!""  - 11 year-old girl from TN

""Most people say it isn't bullying if you're not talking to them but it still is. It is annoying when people don't leave you alone or tease you. I think bullying is wrong because sometimes people get so down they think about suicide and some actually commit suicide.""  - 12 year-old girl from UK

""People told me I was retarded, that I didn't fit in. This girl said that I was bitch and say that she wished I was dead. I never did anything to her but I got really upset and depressed and started cutting myself and started seriously considering suicide. I just ignored them but it still really hurt.""  - 13 year-old girl from Australia

""I was online in a chatroom and this guy was sexually harassing me by saying stuff to me and wouldn't leave me alone. I had to exit the chat room and my email.""  - 14 year-old girl from Canada

""It happened on MSN Messenger about a year ago...A girl threatened to kill me...She said she knew my family and where I lived...She'd come at 1 o'clock to kill me...Then she logged off...I called my mum and told her, she said I should try to find out who if was, if it continued we'd call the police. I sent an email to the girl, telling her I'd call the police. She replied and said she was sorry and she was only kidding. In front of her email address, there was her name! It was a girl in my class.""  - 13 year-old girl outside of USA

""The last time I was bullied online, I was on MSN (instant messaging) talking to some people from school. Someone from my class who doesn't like me started talking sh** about me to everyone else. And a bunch of people that she had been talking to came and started harassing me. They were talking about how I had bad grades in math and how I bite my fingernails and other stupid stuff like that. They still say stuff about me at school and make things up about me and tell everyone.""  - 13 year-old girl from Canada

""I was talking to a friend and she kept calling me fat and ugly and I couldn't stand it anymore so I blocked her but she kept coming up on different screen names calling me the same thing so I just signed off for two days.""  - 13 year-old from CA

""I just tried to ignore her, but her e-mails kept getting even more threatening so I finally turned her into a teacher. I showed her all the e-mails and she was given a months detention.""  - 13 year-old girl from the USA

""I was talking to 2 girls who used to be my friends we where talking about me because that's what they both started on about then they started saying things about me then went on a chat I was also talking on and started saying horrible things about me they used my screen name and everything. They even told one of my guy friends that I liked him since the day we met and he stopped talking to me I was both depressed and angry. I wanted to die. I wanted to leave everything behind. I blocked them and signed off the internet.""  - 13 year-old girl from WV

""It was on a message/bulletin board where people chat. I had said something about my opinion and people thought I was stupid and immature. Also a photo of myself was somehow posted on there and there was severe tormenting and teasing by people of all ages. It was probably for fun but it made me feel terrible.""  - 13 year-old girl from UK

""Kids seem to like to use IM to say swears and words they would never usually say out loud.""  - 13 year-old girl from MA

""I was surfing the Internet and decided to look at my email. Kristina, a friend from school, said in a e-mail tomorrow watch your back we are coming for you. It made me feel so bad i started to cry. Nobody likes me.""  - 11 year-old girl from CA

""Sometimes I get insulted for no reason because i said my mind so then I get into a fight and feel good when i convince the person/change their perspective/prove I'm right because it shows I have an impact on people. Once I got into a huge fight because these girls were bullying one of my friends and I tried to tell them to stop resulting in them insulting me very badly but me getting insulting them all the same. They made threats to beat her up, what else could I do? They printed out what I said but not what they said and showed the principal. I got in a lot of trouble but talked my way out of it telling the TRUTH (something THEY didn't do) and got let off with a warning.""  - 15 year old girl from Canada

""Well the only reason I bullied is because the same person I was doing it to, did it to me like a week before. It wasn't the right thing to do but at the time it felt like I was getting revenge.""  - 15 year old boy from USA

""However, I feel powerless to do anything because I am scared for my own safety.""  - 12 year old girl from UK

""It's one thing when you get made fun of at school, but to be bullied in your own home via your computer is a disgusting thing for someone to do and I think anyone who gets kicks out of it is disgusting. It makes me feel badly about myself. It makes me wonder how people can be so rude and disrespectful of others and makes me lose faith in the human race. It decreases my self esteem and I often wonder what I did to make someone treat me that way.""  - 16 year old girl from AL

""The bullying and torment on [AOL Instant Messenger] and on my websites made me feel absolutely terrible.""  - 9th grader from SC

""When I still had AOL, this one guy asked me how I looked and wanted to know about my body and stuff and I just flat out told him leave me alone!!! I would "have reported him but AOL wouldn't even let me block him without parental permission so he bullied me and stuff online when ever I got on. I felt horrible. That was over four years ago and I still remember every thing he said to me. Every exact word. I felt awful. I hated it. I wanted to tell my parents but I was afraid that they would never let me chat again and I know that's how a lot of other kids feel. It is a bad feeling knowing that people that don't know you are judging you.""  - 13 year old gril from VA

""One of my friends started hassling me on msn messenger; she was sending me nasty messages and text messages and this carried on at school. I told my parents, my friends, and a teacher. she was spoken to a few times but it still carries on a bit now but not as bad because i have blocked her online. This really affected me at home and at school; I couldn't concentrate on school work and I was always upset and down now I just ignore it and get on with it, I have plenty more friends and i don't need her anymore. Maybe one day she will give up and grow up.""  - 15 year old girl from UK

""The internet is not a place to harass others or hurt them. The internet is supposed to be a place that is safe and fun for people, not a place to be criticized or harassed. I used to be bullied at school frequently and I was sometimes hurt so badly that I had to fake sick at school just so I could go home. One girl actually told me she would come and murder my parents and kill me personally. She made me cry so hard that I threw up. So, I know firsthand what its like to be bullied beyond your imagination.""  - 12 year old girl from MI

""I was online in a chat room and this guy was sexually harassing me by saying stuff to me and wouldn't leave me alone. i had to exit the chat room and my email.""  - 14 year old girl from Canada

""It makes me feel bad and rather depressed. Like I don't want to be a part of this world any more.""  - 14 year old girl from NY

""Some girl in my class emailed me calling me a freak and a loser. It made me feel really depressed because I had other things going on too at that time. I told my dad and he called her up and spoke to her. He told her that i didn't read it yet, that it would crush me and that she should think before she does anything like that again. Well, she never did it again so i guess it worked.""  - 15 year old girl from NY

""But I know because I have myself been bullied. It lowers my self-esteem. It makes me feel really crappy. It makes me walk around the rest of the day feeling worthless, like no one cares. It makes me very, very depressed.""  - 12 year old girl from MA

""I still cry when I think of what she said. After awhile you start believing all of the things people tell you that aren't true. When I look in the mirror I wonder if I'm fat (I'm not) after what my ex-friend said.""  - 14 year old girl from IL

""Being bullied besides over the internet is worse. It's torment and hurts. They say "sticks and stones may break my bones,but words will never hurt me." That quote is a lie and I don't believe in it. Sticks and stones may cause nasty cuts and scars, but those cuts and scars will heal. Insultive words hurt and sometimes take forever to heal.""  - 14 year old girl from NJ

""My friend's friend started to make fun of my ethnic background, so I told him to stop disrespecting me. He ignored my plead and started to get even more verbally abusive. I ignored him but he started talking to me saying that I shouldn't f***k with him because he would beat my a** down in front of his friends.""  - 15 year old boy from NJ

""I think most people who bully online just do it to act tough but since they're not saying it to someone's face makes them seem more of a wimp.""  - 15 year old girl from NY

""I had recently picked on a old friend of mine, for what I will not reveal because it was unusually cruel, however she had done something to me that was equally as wrong or if not worse. I was disappointed in her, and for that I decided not to be a friend any longer and spread her deepest secrets to everyone, which made her look like a complete fool. I felt somewhat guilty because I had known her for years, at the same time it was a pay back and I think she learned from it some when it comes to attempting to mess around with me.""  - 17 year old girl from Pennsylvania

""Being bullied makes me feel really bad, and I often get depressed later at home. I would also plot revenge and privately express my 'hatred' towards the bully, but I doubt I would really do anything about it...I don't usually go to adults to 'tattle' on people, even though I know it's not tattling, it's real.""  - 12 year old girl from CA

Workplace Bullying: Weaponizing Belonging at Work

Why belonging is central to personal and professional well-being..

Updated June 24, 2024 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer

• How to Handle Bullying
• Take our Anger Management Test
• Find counselling to support kids or teens
• Belonging is an evolutionary human need.
• Workplace bullying is the purposeful revocation of a target's belonging at work.
• Character assassination and ostracization are used to sever the target's belonging to her work community.
• Thriving after tragedy is possible through Post Traumatic Growth.

Belonging is an evolutionary longing in which connection equals protection, both for our bodies and souls (Sapolsky, 2004). Authentic connection is generative, encouraging us to grow while staying in alignment with our core values (hooks, 1996). True belonging encourages both interdependence, inviting us to lean on and support others, and independence, insisting we maintain personal freedom and autonomy.

Big Tent and Closed Circle Organizational Cultures

Organizations, like families and social networks, enculturate behavioral norms that create either a “big tent” or “closed circle” community (Suskind, 2023). Organizations that create big tent belonging encourage diverse opinions, value disagreement, provide constructive feedback, and, when things go wrong, get curious about the derailment instead of shifting into a blame-and- shame approach to problem-solving.

Most importantly, such organizations, promote psychological safety, which Edmondson (2019) defines as “a climate in which people are comfortable expressing and being themselves. More specifically, when people have psychological safety at work, they feel comfortable sharing concerns and mistakes without fear of embarrassment or retribution. They are confident that they can speak up and won't be humiliated, ignored, or blamed.”

In contrast, closed circle organizational cultures utilize workplace bullying to weaponize belonging, insisting on uniformity in thought, conformity in action, and a blind eye towards abusive and unethical behavior. Closed circle communities construct strict group norms, steep hierarchies, and opaque communication systems that discourage creativity and dissenting opinions.

In closed circle cultures, when disaster strikes and whistleblowers speak up for justice — calling out unprofessional, unethical, or dangerous behavior — organizational retaliation is fierce and swift, most often resulting in the termination, voluntarily or involuntary, of the whistleblower's employment and oftentimes career (Mecili et al., 2012). Alarmingly, such actions serve as a warning shot to bystanders, making them less likely to speak up and out, thus perpetuating the toxic culture (Cialdini, 2005; Kenny, 2019).

Primary Tools for Weaponizing Belonging

At its core, workplace bullying is a covert and overt weaponization of belonging. Workplace bullies use character assassination and ostracization as their primary tools to revoke the target’s belonging to her work community and, most tragically, to herself. The abuse is carried out in a three-part play.

In the first act, the target is identified, most often because she broke toxic workplace norms by being an expert in the field, a highly productive contributor, and a creative problem solver. Once identified, the bully launches an underground rumor campaign, quietly quelling her opportunities, sullying her reputation, and crafting a case with leadership and Human Resources that she is “not a good fit.” In the second act, the target’s work is sabotaged, she is excluded from meetings and social events, and colleagues are encouraged to keep their distance or risk being targeted next. In the final stage, the character assassination is vicious and overt and she is fully ostracized from the community.

The Loss of Belonging at Work

Humans are wired for connection and dependent on others for social support, growth, and the mirroring of self-worth . Work is a primary place where we demonstrate competence, contribute, and build relationships. In the bullying cycle, one of the first weapons deployed is exclusion, slowly pushing the target outside the inner circle. Exclusion, a milder version of ostracization, may take the form of being left out of social events, pushed off of projects, and left to eat alone in the company lunchroom.

Ostracization, on the other hand, is a permanent and full-throttle blow, where the target is discharged from his duties under a false veil of wrongdoing, resulting in intense personal shame. Amplifying the harm, colleagues that the target once considered true friends turn their back, refusing to speak up against the wrongdoing and often joining in on the attacks by contributing to the false narrative, leaving the target isolated when he most needs to feel connection and support. The fallout is intense and long-lasting, resulting in symptoms that may include anxiety , sleep deprivation, depression , gastrointestinal issues, migraines , complex PTSD , and suicidal ideations (Suskind, 2023).

The Loss of Belonging to Oneself

The loss is not contained to the work community but ripples out and into the target’s sense of belonging to himself, creating a moral wounding. A moral injury , according to Shay (2014), occurs when there is a betrayal of what is right by someone in authority in a high-stakes situation. The wounding is intensified by organizational complacency, when — despite the egregious, unethical, and harmful behaviors — those in positions to right the wrong and stop the bleeding instead look the other way, fearful to risk their own reputations. Such negligence results in institutional betrayal, intensifying the harm done (Smith & Freyd, 2015).

Inside the bullying paradigm, the moral injury and institutional betrayal create what Janoff-Bulman (2010) describes as “shattered assumptions,” a disassembling that takes place when the target no longer believes the world is benevolent, events are meaningful, and he has inherent value. This loss is immeasurable and hard to define, leaving the target with what Boss (2021) describes as an ambiguous loss or “a loss that remains unclear and without official verification or immediate resolution, which may never be achieved.” This wounding leaves many targets in a repeating loop of despair as they search for the external apology and justice that are likely not forthcoming.

So what is one to do to recreate the connections that have been lost and reclaim the sense of belonging that is an inalienable human right?

Reclaiming Belonging: Post Traumatic Growth

Healing from the moral injury and institutional betrayal of workplace abuse requires the target to reconnect to a community and herself, re-establishing her belonging. As Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl (1992) aptly put it, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

Though many targets of abuse, by no fault of their own, remain in a tailspin of terror and despair, unable to find solid ground to rebuild a foundation, some not only recover from the trauma but thrive after the tragedy. Thriving is not a result of forgetting or even forgiving the harm done, but acknowledging the pain and repositioning it inside their life’s narrative in a way that makes it manageable to carry and even a beacon of insight and hope for those that follow. As Rabbi Harold Kushner (1981) put it, “In the final analysis, the question of why bad things happen to good people translates itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened.”

This seismic shift is called Post Traumatic Growth or PTG, first unearthed by Tedeschi and Lawrence (1996). PTG is a type of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer, accentuating the cracks as a revenant offering, inviting the target not to cover up the tragedy but to see it as a new reconfiguration of self that is fully whole and beautiful (Kumai, 2018).

• The first shift occurs when the target seeks out new opportunities, realizing the current situation is unmanageable and must change. This may take the form of switching professional positions or making a change outside of work life, like creating a writing group for those who have suffered abuse. Oftentimes, in providing a service and outlet to help others, we end up saving ourselves.
• The second shift happens when the target rebuilds her community by deepening her current friendships outside of work or forming new connections, whether it be in the community formed in shift one or another community like a painting or hiking group.
• Inside these blossoming communities from shifts one and two, the third shift transpires when the target acquires a new appreciation and reverence for her inner strength, courage, and value, hence re-establishing her belonging to herself.
• In the fourth shift, this inward appreciation moves outward, as the target readjusts and reprioritizes her worldview, emphasizing service and relationships over profit and position.
• The fifth and final shift transpires once the target has reestablished her community and self-belonging, preparing her to connect to something greater than herself, whether that be through religion, spiritual practice, or nature.

In the end, as Ram Dass (2022) poetically shared, “we’re all just walking each other home.”

Janoff-Bulman, R. (2010). Shattered Assumptions: Towards a new psychology of Trauma. Simon and Schuster.

Cialdini, R. B. (2005). Basic social influence is underestimated. Psychological Inquiry, 16(4), 158–161.

Dass, R. & Bush, M. (2022). Walking each other home: Conversations on loving and dying. Sounds True.

Edmondson, A. C. (2019). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

Frankl, V. E. (1992). Man's search for meaning. Boston: Beacon Press.

Kenny, K. (2019). Whistleblowing: Toward a new theory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

hooks, B. (1996). Reel to real: Race, sex, and class at the movies. New York: Routledge.

Kushner, H. S. (1981). When bad things happen to good people. New York: Schocken Books.

Kumai, C. (2018). Kintsugi wellness: The Japanese art of nourishing the mind, body, and soul. New York: HarperCollins.

Miceli, M. P., Near, J. P., Rehg, M. T., & Van Scotter, J. R. (2012). Predicting employee reactions to perceived organizational wrongdoing: Demoralization, justice, proactive personality, and whistle-blowing. Human Relations, 65, 923-954.

Sapolsky, R. M. (2004). Why zebras don't get ulcers. New York: Times Books.

Shay, J. (2014). Moral injury. Psychoanal. Psychol. 31, 182–191. doi: 10.1037/a0036090.

Smith, C. P., & Freyd, J. J. (2015, August). First, do no harm: Institutional betrayal in healthcare. Symposium presented at the 123rd Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Ontario.

Suskind, D. (2023). Workplace bullying: Finding your way to big tent belonging. Rowman and Littlefield.

Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (1996). The posttraumatic growth inventory: measuring the positive legacy of trauma. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 9(3), 455–71.

Dorothy Suskind, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Education and Counseling Department at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia. Her research focuses on workplace bullying.

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• v.60(1); Jan-Mar 2018

Cyberbullying: A virtual offense with real consequences

T. s. sathyanarayana rao.

Department of Psychiatry, JSS Medical College, JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research, Formerly JSS University, Mysore, Karnataka, India

Deepali Bansal

Suhas chandran.

Technology, as we know, is a double-edged sword, where the users are continuously balancing between the risks and opportunities it offers. It is no longer just a cliché: we really are all connected, 24/7, no matter where in the world, we are mere one click away from our families, co-workers, classmates, idols, mentors, neighbors, and even strangers. On one side, the Internet has made the world a much smaller place full of opportunities to thrive for people with minimal resources along with bringing awareness to important sociopolitical movements and acting as a platform for fundraising for many noble causes; on the other side, it has exposed vulnerable people to a deep dark world of web and bullying while sitting safely in the vicinity of their homes.

A popular report by a US market research company in 2015[ 1 ] suggests that, at the time, there were more mobile devices on the planet than people –8.6 billion devices versus 7.3 billion people. And by the end of 2018, the number of mobile devices in world will exceed 12 billion – an average of nearly 2 devices per user. This rapid rise of electronic-based communication during the past decade has dramatically changed the social interactions, especially among teenagers. Adolescents are moving from using the Internet as an “extra” in everyday communication to using it as the “primary” mode of communication. This shift from face-to-face communication to online communication has created many unique and potentially harmful dynamics for social relationships – one such dynamic has recently been explored in the literature as cyberbullying.

Cyberbullying is defined by Smith et al . as an “aggressive, intentional act carried out by a group or individual, using electronic forms of contact, repeatedly and over time against a victim who cannot easily defend himself or herself.”[ 2 ] Most definitions of bullying rely upon three criteria; intent to harm, imbalance of power, and repetition of the act. Cyberbullying also can happen accidentally. The impersonal nature of text messages, instant messages, and e-mails makes it very hard to detect the sender's tone – one person's joke could be another's hurtful insult. However, a repeated pattern is rarely accidental. In case of cyberbullying, this becomes relatively easy, where the power of one click is immense and increases the audience by thousands, thus increasing the humiliation and impact of bullying exponentially. The scope of cyberbullying is vast, in terms of means as well as content. It includes bullying through text messages, phone calls, e-mails, instant messengers, social media platforms, or in chat rooms. It varies from posting hurtful words, derogatory comments, posting fake information on public forums or blogs, hacking accounts for personal vendetta to rape or death threats. It can be as ruinous as revenge porn, which is posting sexually explicit images or videos of a person on the Internet, typically by a former sexual partner, without the consent of the subject and in order to cause them distress or embarrassment. The impact of such acts can be catastrophic, especially for young adults, who feel so embarrassed and humiliated that they cannot imagine surviving the next morning, and end up taking extreme steps which include harm to self and occasionally, others. It deeply reflects the real-world problems arising out of the virtual cyberspace. No longer limited to schoolyards or street corners, it has now moved to WhatsApp, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, etc., where online polls are conducted to bodyshame the victim and groups are made to spread false rumours or share morphed pictures and videos, to a rather vast audience with the power of the Internet, which would not have been so easily possible in the physical world otherwise. Cyberbullying also differs from traditional bullying in offering potential anonymity to the bully and difficulty in identifying the victim. This combined with the obvious lack of monitoring and regulation in cyberspace makes the issue more intricate and strenuous to address.

On the basis of their online behavior, people can be categorized as cyber victim, cyber bully, and cyber victim/bully. The possible adverse effects of cyberbullying can be physical, psychological, or in academic performance, and these are most pronounced for the cyber bully/victim category.[ 3 ] Higher rates of depression and anxiety are noted among cyber victims along with refusal to school and declining academic performance. These students are also found to be more prone to report headache, stomach ache, bed wetting, and various other psychosomatic complaints. The type of cyberbullying tends to differ among both genders; girls are more likely to post mean comments online, while boys are more likely to post hurtful pictures or videos online.[ 4 ] As postulated by the USA-based Cyberbullying Research Centre, there are many reasons as to why dysphoric outcomes of cyberbullying are different and potentially more than traditional bullying. For example, the computer-based messages are more permanent as compared to the verbal statements as they are preserved in websites, internet archives, search engine caches, and user devices; it is easier to make hurtful, embarrassing, or threatening statements on the Internet because of comparative difficulty in detecting and identifying the misbehavior and offending party, proving or verifying the act of wrongdoing, and imposing a meaningful sanction; victimization through the Internet is omnipresent beyond the school, playground, or neighborhood due to the ubiquity of computers and cell phones and the “always-connected” lives that adolescents in todays’ world lead; the youth is increasingly embracing new mediums and devices of communication, and thus the number of potential victims and offenders is rapidly growing.[ 5 ] The repercussions of virtual and seemingly not real harassment are very evidently seen in the real world, in our schools, and even in our homes, the place where the child is supposed to feel the most safe.

In the Indian context, year by year, due to increasing access to technology, inexpensive internet plans, and politicians vehemently pursuing and pushing the dream of “Digital India,” the risk of cyberbullying is alarming and its assessment and prevention become even more urgent. Now, the overwhelming majority of population has access to the Internet through a computer, a tablet, or mostly on a mobile device. The most vulnerable of this population are our children and teenagers, who are being catapulted into cyberspace before they are actually capable of making sense of it psychologically. The Global Youth Online Behaviour Survey conducted by Microsoft ranked India third in cyberbullying, with 53% of the respondents, mainly children admitting to have experienced online bullying, falling behind only China and Singapore.[ 6 ]

Children and adolescents are naturally curious and, more often than not, more competent with technology than adults. Most of these children exploring the Internet are not old enough to detect or understand the risks online as well as the consequences of their own behavior online. Despite minimum age requirements for joining popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, many children join these platforms by misrepresenting their age mainly because these do not have any stringent guidelines for the age limit of joining. According to Intel Security Teens, Tweens and Technology Study conducted over a period of 5 years in India, the results published in 2015 claim that 81% of the children aged 8 to 16 years are already active on social media. Nearly 77% of these children had a Facebook account before they were 13 years of age. Almost 22% of these children, that is, one in five children, face online abuse.[ 7 ] These 2015 data are alarming and make us wonder what the figures might be now. Children become vulnerable to the dark underbelly of the Internet where an anonymous person sitting on a computer miles away can permanently scar their self-esteem by the power of a click, making cyberspace a dangerous and largely unmonitored playground. As a rule, Indian parents warn their children about strangers lurking on the street. There is a dire need of doing the same for online behavior as well, yet it is hardly done or even considered worrisome.

Recently, with the swiftly increasing number of stories pertaining to cyberbullying involving matters as serious as self-harm and suicide, and harrowing headlines in newspapers reading “Two preteens arrested for cyberbullying after student hangs herself” becoming a common sight, cyberbullying has come at the center of international conversation. For example, mainstream Australian politicians are putting forward ideas for an “anti-cyberbullying taskforce” on national agenda, and real-time discussion is happening in the parliament on policymaking and guidelines to put cyberbullying to an end.[ 8 ] On the other end of the spectrum, various cyber-psychologists and researchers are studying the phenomenon and relevant characteristics of cyberbullying extensively. One such example is Dr. Mary Aiken, who in her book The Cyber Effect [ 9 ] describes the psychological phenomenon of “Diffusion of Responsibility” in relation to cyberbullying. It is described that the greater the number of people who witness a crime of emergency, the less likely any of them will feel responsible to respond. It can also be called The Bystander Effect and, in case of cyberbullying, hundreds to thousands of people can witness bullying or harsh criticism online on a regular basis but do not step up and do anything. Two-thirds of teenagers who face online cruelty also witness others joining in, and more than one-fifth of the teens report to have joined the harassment themselves.[ 10 ]

Furthermore, just like most of the social media platforms use social analytics to make algorithms to estimate user's age, sex, and political leanings, there are actual mathematical algorithms to identify antisocial behavior, bullying, or harassment online. These algorithms use simple parameters to measure the content (words such as “bitch,”; “hate,” and “die”), direction, interval, and frequency of bullying. This kind of approach will help the law enforcement agencies, schools, as well as parents to keep their eyes open on whether the child is being bullied online.

Apart from children, adults also get bullied online on a regular basis. Cyberbullies, commonly referred as trolls on the internet, basking in anonymity have the power of abusing and harassing a person without fear of any ramification of their actions. Politicians, actors, and sportspersons get cyberbullied routinely and report the distress it causes to them. Yet, there are no clear laws or regulatory guidelines to handle this complex issue. Mainstream national TV channels are recognizing the relevance of this issue in the current scenario and are coming up with campaigns and programs such as “Troll Police.”[ 11 ]

In India, Section 66A of the amended IT Act deals with these crimes. Sending any message (through a computer or a communication device) that is grossly offensive or has menacing character – any communication which he/she knows to be false, but for the purpose of causing insult, annoyance, and criminal intimidation, under the current Indian IT/Cyber/Criminal laws – is punishable upto 3 years of imprisonment with a fine, but this law fails to deal with the intricacies of cyberbullying. It is high time that the mental health fraternity comes forward to address the issue of cyberbullying with more focused research and help the lawmakers in formulating policies and regulatory laws that will help to identify as well as curb the menace. Another important and effective broker in identifying and stopping cyberbullying is school, where the role of mental health professional becomes pivotal in formulating effective school-based anti-cyberbullying programs, which focus on individual psychotherapy as well as educate the students on cyber-ethics and the cyber laws. Cyberbullying is an online problem that needs to be dealt with offline, and like Theodore Roosevelt popularly said “Knowing what's right doesn't mean much unless you do what's right,” merely acknowledging cyberbullying as a problem is not enough anymore. It is also imperative that mental health professionals use their critical expertise in formulating and implementing school- and community-wide approaches to cyberbullying prevention.