How might the findings described by your colleague be used to inform helpful strategies for teachers and parents dealing with an adolescent cyberbully
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According to ( Watts, Wagner, Velasquez & Behrens, 2017), the internet can certainly be a positive resource that is used for research, email, connecting socially, and for business. However, it can also have negative aspects. You can become some obsessed with being online that you lose the ability to connect with others face-to-face. Cyberbullying has become more commonplace in recent years due to the prevalence of technology (Watts, Wagner, Velasquez & Behrens, 2017). This is possibly due to the benefit of anonymity gained while online versus face-to-face. People tend to be braver when no one will find out it is them. With the ability to hide behind a username, they feel free to electronically harass others. A reward that an adolescent-aged cyberbully would receive is a sense of power they receive. Certain characteristics were found in persons who are cyberbullies. A predictor of cyberbullying was found to be interception and aggression. There are several theories that attempt to explain why adolescents cyberbully. Two of the theories that make this attempt are Conflict Theory, and Choice Theory (cyberbullyingcrim12, n.d.). Conflict Theory states that explains it in terms of social levels. There are teens who are at the highest social levels that want to stay at the top and at the same time, distance themselves from the teens at the bottom, and the teens at the bottom want to increase their status, Because of their desire to maintain or increase their status, they may resort to cyberbullying. Choice Theory explains adolescent cyberbullying as teens who have difficulty or the inability to maintain healthy relationships because their need to belong and develop relationships has not been satisfied which leads to. It also states that those adolescents who cyberbully have the need to try to control others’ behavior and not their own due to some internal issue and not an external one.
