Cyberbullying: Psychological Effect on Children

The phenomenon of bullying is highly complicated. Bullying has been deep-rooted in Indian society since ages through the mythological periods of Mahabharata. Bullying has impaired various facets in the society including individual characteristics, peer, family relationships and dynamics and has led to lacerate community values, moral attitudes, resulting in stigma, discrimination and vulnerability. Technology has made this issue more obvious and aggravated with new forms of bullying such as cyber bullying with unique approaches to harass and intimidate peers for reasons unlimited such as –harassing by posting hurtful messages with or without mensrea, may be for good, bad, revenge, time pass or as an easy prank without understanding the menace they are inviting. Cyber bullying may be done by those who have to struggle with social, emotional or academic difficulties, bullying is not considered to be part of crime as often bullying is considered as a pre-requisite mischief in the developing stage of children hence involving in cyber bullying as victim or as the aggressor, maygo unrecognized by parents, teachers, children and teens. In this paper, I have aimed to explore the psychological aftereffect on children and teens after being constantly harassed on social media and critically framing it as “cyber-tort.” The present paper attempts to integrate existing dilemma due to cyber-bullying, and the omnipresent personality traits in online environment and deduce it to the psychological context.