Only two hours and 11 minutes. That’s how long it takes for someone to die from suicide. And the people who attempt it and survive have to deal with the feelings they have towards themselves. This is a huge problem, and one of the biggest reasons is cyberbullying on social media. I think the app moderators should be the ones responsible for cyberbullying. If they took more time looking for cyberbullying, it would change things.
One of the reasons that social media is a problem is because of something called cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is bullying where people make fun of or bully you, most likely on social media apps. Having companies moderate this would be more effective than people handling it themselves because no matter how many times you block someone, they can always just make new accounts. People can directly message you, comment on your videos, and more. Almost every video you see on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter has at least one hate comment, even if the person did nothing wrong. People might not think this is a big deal until the person they were cyberbullying kills themself. The sad part is that most of the time, the bullies don’t even know or care. I cannot express how many people cyberbully and don’t think of the consequences. Sure, some people might not care, but many people’s reputations are built off these social media apps.
Let’s say there’s this girl named Amaya, and she posts a video on TikTok and gets a comment saying she’s ugly, but she doesn’t care. That is, she doesn’t care until all her videos are filled with people just saying she’s ugly. Soon enough, this can escalate to bigger insults, and she starts believing them. Then, possibly, she attempts suicide. It doesn’t matter if the attempt resulted in death or not. What matters is she feels this way all because of one comment calling her ugly. That should give you a feel for how much cyberbullying can hurt people.
Another reason why social media is a problem is not cyberbullying but bragging. What I mean by bragging is people online bragging about their life, how rich they are, and how pretty they are. It can start making people feel like their life isn’t that great. Most times, the person bragging is insecure and just wants people to think their life is great even if it’s not, but it can also make other people feel bad.
I think some really good solutions for the bragging problem and the cyberbullying problem could be if the app moderators are the ones who fix it by looking out for the cyberbullies and braggers. There should be different plans for braggers and cyberbullies. Cyberbullies should either get warned or banned for a certain amount of time, depending on how hurtful the bullying is, if it’s a threat, etc. Social media companies should also have more settings so the target can also handle it. For example, you can have the ability to add words that you don’t want in your comment section, and if someone tries to say them, block them. Now I know some people might find this annoying because they couldn’t joke around with their friends anymore. That’s why I came up with another setting that allows you to add accounts that are able to say certain things. Other than this, I think social media companies should try to support anti-bullying more. They can do this with ads mostly to remind people about the dangers of cyberbullying.
In conclusion, social media apps should start paying more attention to cyberbullying and bragging so people, especially teenagers, don’t try to harm or kill themselves.
