It's been a while since I last participated in one of Hive Learner's weekly topics. Have been busy these previous months and am still quite busy now, but I miss writing about some thought-provoking topics that I can see here consistently.
Anyway, in regard to the topic at hand, I have the opinion that any type of bullying or harassment is bad, as it can bring long-lasting emotional and mental scars to anyone who has been a victim of it, and at worst, even result in the victim losing their life, and rightfully should condemn any sort of acts. However, when it comes to the form of bullying that does more damage to an individual, I think that doing it personally has worse effects than when done online.
When we say online bullying, the way that it is done is mostly through social media sites, and since people only need a smartphone and internet to access social media, bullying through this means becomes much easier because they can harass the person almost every time they are online, and any shred of empathy gets lost as the bullies cannot personally see the emotional pain that inflict to the victim. Aside from that, bullies can hide within a fake account and remain anonymous, meaning that most of the time, they do not get any repercussions for their actions, while also shaming the victim in front of all of their online friends and connections.
But as easy as online bullying is to do, stopping it is also quite easily done. All the victim needs to do is block the bully's account, and if that is not enough, the victim can stay offline, and maybe after some time, the bully will lose interest in them. It can only be hard to do if the victim is so married to his social account, which many people now has become addicted to, but that's a different can of worms plaguing our society.
If the victim does not want to do both approach, then it is also possible to stand against his bully by grabbing screenshots of the online harassments and report the bully's account to the social media site or instead do a "call to action" to the people to criticize the bully's action.
On the other hand, physical bullying is a more direct way of harassing a person because the victim can personally hear all the verbal attacks of the bully personally without any real means of avoiding it, because even if the victim tries to, the bully will just follow them wherever they go, and when they find a place that they can be alone with the victim, that is where they will start doing their bullying. And most of the times, it just not stop on verbal attacks but also include physical attacks and even stealing stuff from the victim.
And you might say, that the victim just needs to report the bully, but it was really difficult for the victim to do it because they fear that it will only lead to more retaliation from the bully and the shame of people knowing that a victim is being bullied. Avoiding the bully was also almost impossible to do when it was done personally because that means that both the victim and the bully shares the same environment.
Regardless, both types of bullying cand deeply damage a person in many ways that even the bully itself does not expect. So whichever type of bullying it is, it must always be taken seriously. And as humans, we should always put ourselves in others shoes and think how the things we do will affect people if we are in their situation.
Thank you for reading my post, and see you in the next one!
