The Effects of Cyberbullying

I was talking with a friend some days ago after going through some pages on nairaland,i saw how some people open threads and get bullied to either stop posting or leave the site entirely. Insults are thrown around,some set of people even gang bully the individual and display full territorialism.
I begin to wonder if the so called adults who cyber-bully an individual knows the effect it can have on the individual's persona.
Let us define cyber-bullying,
Cyber-bullying is the use of information technology to harm or harass other people in a deliberate,repeated and hostile manner. With the increase in use of the internet, cyber-bullying has become increasingly common especially among growing adults.
Cyber-bullying has recently become common on social networks(twitter, facebook, nairaland),some people who naturally do not have good life takes to the internet to vent their frustration, spit hatred and bully others.
Research and recent happenings had demonstrated a number of serious consequences of cyber-bullying victimization.

The common effects of this are on the victims:
1. Victims have low self esteem
2. Increased suicidal ideation
3. Varieties of emotional responses
4. Retaliating,being scared,frustrated,angry and depressed.

One of the damaging effect is also avoidance of friends and activities.

It should be known that it is not everyone who uses the internet is mentally alright, as much as a person who is mentally well can put a block between this intimidation and his/her self esteem,a person who suffers mental disorder is vulnerable to cyber-bullying and most times unable to shake it off.

Most of our youths become less confident (especially the girls who are about twice as likely as boys to be victims of cyber-bullying) when they are cyber-bullied,they accept probably everything said to them as the truth and it gets to their daily activity and some even resort to suicide.

Let us put a stop to cyber-bullying today. You can't tell who is dying because of your words.