Research Article Open Access

Disturbing Psycho-social Trends in Social Media: The Phenomena of Cyber Bullying and Cyber Stalking

Abstract

The double phenomena of cyber bullying and cyber stalking have received a lot of media and academic attention in recent years, especially after the locker room incident in May 2020 and quite rightly so. The surreptitious nature of this crime, coupled with the fact that it is mostly prevalent in school going children and teenagers in college; usually hushed up by guilty parents and/or siblings, make it difficult to pinpoint the locus of this crime and in fact many embarrassed parents even refuse to recognize it as a crime, debunking it’s seriousness by calling it as “misdirected playfulness” and that “kids will be kids”. This is extremely unfortunate as according to Microsoft’s ‘Global Youth Online Behavior Surveyi’ of 25 countries, India ranked third with 53% of respondents (children aged between 8-17) saying they have been bullied online, behind China (70%) and Singapore (58%). Moreover, these kinds of cyber-crimes finds a high incidence of occurrence mainly in pre-teens and teenagers, both categories of children who while undergoing many hormonal changes and attitude shifts, are also highly stressed because of studies, competitive exams and peer as well as parental pressure. At an age where a chance stray remark or image can irreparably upset an already fragile psychological imbalance, these phenomena simply cannot be ignored.

In November 2017, an MBBS student in Kerala jumped to her death from the highest floor of her college building. An examination of her Facebook profile showed her displeasure over the nasty comments made one of her peers. Police suspect that cyber bullying provoked her to take this extreme step. In another incident 20 year old Gurmehar Kaur was repeatedly trolled and cyber abused after her long campaign against violence on social media platforms. While so far these incidents have been few and far between, in recent years such kind of extreme reactions to social media onslaughts have been on the rise and a matter of debate on state, national and of course social media platforms. In this paper, we examine the twin menace of cyber bullying and cyber stalking both from a national as well as international perspective and try to analyse why remedial action, especially in India, is so slow and insignificant as well as the present legal responses Recourses Also, it is hoped through this paper to reiterate the imperative to take urgent measures to counter this menace on a priority basis.

Sam Rao*

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