HOW TO DEAL WITH CYBER BULLIES

            We all naturally thought of bullies as someone to be afraid and insecure of. Dealing with them isn't as easy as they would to you, because of course, the bully's probably on a one-path state of mind on taking advantage of you. We thought we've got ourselves away from bullies inside the confines of the internet, and you probably guessed it already. We didn't. The internet is also inhabited by threatening bullies, and not only your ordinary neighbor/school bully. These people can form threats to your identity, accounts, and a lot more if we don't keep caution. The worst part is, anyone can be a social media bully, even a physically defenseless kid can, that is, if they have complicated capabilities of hacking. But for those with the common extent of threatening through the user-friendly way like through communication, blackmail and so on, these are the people we need to worry about especially that we're not too big YET to be even considered as victims of hackers if ever, as they aren't considered as social media bullies, but more of highly-skilled thieves with unbelievable stealth entering your houses in the middle of the night, while you're sound asleep. Given the inevitability of their arrival in your sight like school bullies, here’s how to handle those social media bullies.

ON INSULTS

        The common type of bullying that can be found in social networking sites. Even outside the internet, it's known as one of the basics of bullying, and critically effective. With just words, big changes can occur to people and even the way they decide and their state of mind. We can remedy this by plainly ignoring the one that insults. Usually, ignoring them would make them look more stupid and it turns out that they ended up insulting themselves by wasting time. Though if we just can't handle it, we can actually ignore them in many ways. We can log out of whatever social media we're in, or if you think that the bully can never be utilized by you in the future, there is always an option to terminate both your connections with each other or just simply block them. Though as much as possible, try not to fight back, since it causes more trouble on your part and they usually return once they know you respond to their unconscious attempts to have unaccredited and unnecessary social merit or self satisfaction (because they probably didn't get what they want in something particular or general). As Robert J. Sawyer said in his book "Calculating God", "Learning to ignore is one of the great paths to inner peace."

WHEN THEY'RE THREATENING YOU

    The common threats bullies have within their reach are usually blackmail and the classic threat of inviting someone to have an up-front fight with. The solution to the up-front fight threat is to ignore it or for both threats, it's best to talk to someone you trust about it. Recommended people to talk to for this situation are your parents, relatives or your best friend/s. This helps you gain guidance before you can ever make any rash decisions that you'll probably regret upon doing so. But most of all, it helps. It helps you ease out the pressure and trouble, and it opens up a lot of options and the support you receive will increase your confidence or at least decrease your worries. Then, try formulating a plan, as much as possible a flawless one, and make sure it includes a good part of legal authority, if ever you want to be sure. Though if so ever they succeed, especially in the blackmailing threat in social media, like for example, posting a picture that is very critical to your reputation or spilling information from you that you did not want to expose and so on, we always have the option in social networking sites to report it as abuse. Or if you think that's not enough, you can always confront the bully up front with proper authorities or guardians and ask the bully personally to take the post down without using any physical force as this would be better in most situations.

    All the probable solutions to cyber bullying are usually not needed if we were to prevent it. Being a victim of cyber bullying isn't as inevitable as the up-front bullying because in the platform of the internet and the utilization of freedom of speech with various uncountable crowds who sides with whoever they think appeals most to them, we all become equal in the platform, unlike up-front, we are detained by our limited capabilities, and words aren't as concrete as actions to the commoners. That's why prevention or caution should be a priority upon entering social media. In social media, there are user-friendly settings that give us the option to limit our audience. This is of utmost concern because it can strengthen your security, information and especially your identity and reputation. As the very famous quote by Desiderius Erasmus continues its unending relevance to a lot of situations, "Prevention is better than cure", it never fails to remind us of the significance of prevention, unless our recklessness is more dominant and we have to learn its significance by finding the cure.

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Contributed by: Jan Miranda