Argumentative Essay

Cyberbullying – Unethical but not Illegal?

Dani Brownwalker

Introduction

There are two ways to live a life in this world. The one is a good way, and the other is a wrong way. Similarly, we can say that one way is ethical and the other way is highly unethical, but when considering the case of philosophy and moral codes, there are various ways in which the illegal acts are considered as legal as per the requirement of the situation in the practical field. There are multiple phenomena's in the world which are usually regarded as legitimate in the world but at the same time looking in some other context, that phenomena are considered is illegal. Cyberbullying is an unethical and immoral activity that is considered absolutely unacceptable through social media platforms, however, it is often not considered illegal while the victim continues to be harassed.

Cyberbullying – Illegal or Unethical?

Various criminal activities leave a significant mark on the mind and personality of the people. Similar is the situation of the illegal activities that are occurring now in the technological world. These activities that were usually observed in the daily lives happening in lives of people like bullying took the step ahead. With the time it was noticed that these activities were now taking place on where social media platforms and they were increasing with the increment of members and increment of the social media platforms that targeting in the bullying was growing. This time the platforms were not only Facebook but the open platforms like Orkut or Twitter where everything is visible to all the viewers globally. With this issue, many of the people have been victimized and have gone through adverse effects on their mind, and they came to a point which is their breaking point and as a result, they either become patients of some psychological disorders, or they opt to commit suicide as a last option as all these activities become highly torturous. This was the time when the authoritative people need to look into the matter sincerely this can either have the pros and cons in both ways that can either help the people and at the same time they can be profoundly devastating for the people.

Every phenomenon that occurs in the world leaders towards the severe pros and cons in the world. Either they can be favorable for the persona and can generate a massive and severe impact on the lives of the people.

With the advent of technology, there was a rapid and massive increment in the crime son the platforms of social media (Holfeld & Mishna, 2018). Initially, the purpose of the social media was to provide the information in the quickest way to the user and save their time and energy and provide them everything within no time. By the time prolonged the activities took a negative turn in this field where they had moved towards a point where the heinous and torturous crimes like bullying started taking place on the social media platforms. Not only to that context had these crimes taken a next level turn where the people began facing severe issues relevant to the point where they go through mental stress and severe mental breakdown (Livingstone, Stoilova & Kelly, 2016).

These issues can lead towards the risk of life and there comes the point where the victim feels high demotivation towards life and comes out with no solution. This is the point when the person believes that there is no other option besides reaching an end to quit this life forever. This is the point when they think that suicide is the only option that can give them relief from all the hatred comments and negativities from life. These all activities can be highly dangerous for the people as this can risk their lives.

Opposing Arguments

Contrary to that if we look at the pros of the cyberbullying in the technological industry, it has given an immense amount of facilities to the people (Wang, Iannotti & Nansel, 2009). It can help to reveal the people on the social media who are into the account of bullying other and spreading all the negativity on the social media platforms and creating severe chaos. Similarly, the additional advantage of cyberbullying is that due to their increasing activities, it has given awareness to the people to take sharp and harsh actions on the nature of the work of these people. In response to the events of these people, the cyber crime department was launched to overcome all these issues in the field of cyber world (Agatston, Kowalski & Limber, 2007).

While there is a wide agreement on the unethicality and immorality of cyberbullying no matter what it scope was, there are still certain arguments presented in favor of the claim that cyberbullying cannot be considered illegal. First argument to support this opposing claim is in reference to ‘freedom of speech’. For instance, a personal may spread hate speech or heated remarks about another person, party, etc. through social media. This may harm the reputation of the victim. However, he may defend himself under the constitutional clause of freedom of speech since he may not be brining any physical harm to anyone.

Another argument in favor of opposition is on the basis of ‘virtuality’ of cyber world. Some may argue that what happens online is a virtual activity that may lack any physical evidence, credibility or significance. Therefore, it is improper to impose any physical law, legislation or regulation on such acts.

While these arguments do exist in favor of cyberbullies, this cannot be denied that any act – physical, emotional or virtual – that brings emotional, physical or psychological trauma to the victims is considered unethical and immoral. And must be avoided at all costs.

These were not only a few of the advantages one of the most significant gains that triggers the people of underworld by creating online traps and as a result it helps the officials and the intelligence agencies to pick all these convicts so that there can be lesser amount of activities that can be seen on the social media and the platforms provided on the internet. This also gives an alarm to the parents to have a keen observation of the activities of their children.

Conclusion

By look at both sides of the topic, the point which we conclude is that everything has some advantages and the disadvantages too. It entirely depends upon the user that how the user wants to utilize the technology. The utilization of technology develops the pros and cons of all the terms and all the scenarios that occur in the society without which it gets highly stressful for the people to opt the right path. As per the recommendations of all the researchers is to move towards the positive aspect of all the fields to eradicate all the negativities from the community.

References

Agatston, P. W., Kowalski, R., & Limber, S. (2007). Students' perspectives on cyberbullying. Journal of Adolescent Health, 41(6), S59-S60.

Wang, J., Iannotti, R. J., & Nansel, T. R. (2009). School bullying among adolescents in the United States: Physical, verbal, relational, and cyber. Journal of Adolescent Health, 45(4), 368-375.

Livingstone, S., Stoilova, M., & Kelly, A. (2016). Cyberbullying: incidence, trends, and consequences.

Holfeld, B., & Mishna, F. (2018). Longitudinal associations in youth involvement as victimized, bullying, or witnessing cyberbullying. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 21(4), 234-239.