According to statistics published in 2006 at least a third of all teenagers experience cyber bullying in one or more of its varied forms throughout their adolescent years.
That amasses to a startling 13 million teens per annum and with social networking sites seeing more users than ever these numbers are only destined to increase during the second decade of this century.
As both a victim and perpetrator of bullying - you know, the old-fashioned face-to-face way, not the hiding behind a screen barely as big as a baby new age kind - I can tell you it’s not the most overwhelmingly happy experience of one’s youth, quite the opposite in fact.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I am in no way intending to belittle the pain and humiliations of cyber bullying, I just find the whole notion to be rather, well, peculiar.
These days you can do almost anything on the internet apart from wash and exercise. You can also find out various statistics in a matter of seconds such as “one fifth of teens are now obese”.
With these things in mind I have always imagined orchestrators of cyber bullying to be overweight grubby individuals with little in the way of intellect or social life and therefore find it difficult to be insulted, offended or upset by any attempt by said persons to make a badly constructed disparaging comment.
In conclusion, cyber bullying, alongside Ugg wearing and Ant & Dec, has got to be the most puerile and pathetic thing to experience a boom in popularity during the 'noughties'.
By Lacey Waters, age 17, from Bexley
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