Bullying is a destructive phenomenon, and it has rapidly grown over the years. Bullying through social media has been as a result of the ease of use and the accessibility of the internet and electric devices. While the traditional type of bullying was only known and done by a few people, bullying through social media involves the spread of information that is cruel by the perpetrators to a vast number of people for a brief period. Cyberbullying has excellent effects that are negative hence the need to educate people on the use of technology responsibly. The paper aims to discuss why social media incites bullying while identifying the age in which it is likely to occur. The paper will also identify circumstance which causes bullying through social media.
Social Media and Inciting Bullying
For the past decade, the use of social media has increased. Websites of social media offer a comprehensive set of functionality and are characterized by a variety of styles of communication and content that is user-generated. The popularization and advancements of communication forms, internet technology, have allowed the users to communicate with many people as well as change the interaction of people with each other ( Garett, Lord, & Young, 2016) .
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Today users can be able to reach a vast number of audiences and interact with them even if not face to face. The emergence of cyberbullying is one of the significant consequences of the revolution in social media, and it is a new bullying form where people are victimized in front of many people, often by people they have never met or interacted with. A user selects the information he or she wants to share, and this ability to share has given people unhindered access to information that is private and a platform that is available for the leverage of information against other people ( Leviner, 2018) .
Cyberbullying occurs through text messages, apps, SMSs, among other ways in social media in which sharing and viewing of content can be done. Through social media, information that is embarrassing, threatening, harassing or even intimidating about a person is shared, and this is what is referred to as bullying in social media. Through social media, a person can be singled out with rude comments being made about that person, private and personal information is shared, harsh languages can be used, all of which is bullying.
Social media also allows for impersonation in which a person creates fakes accounts all access the mind of someone that they want to bully. They then post information that is inappropriate, pretending to be the victim which can ruin the reputation of that person. This is a severe kind of bullying. Through social media, bullies share comments or images, and they then invite other people to join in the bullying. The ability of the bullies to incite others to join a bully is increased with the number of sites available for bullying ( Leviner, 2018) . For example, a bully could share images or comments about a person on Facebook and do the same on other sites like Instagram, Twitter, and also through emails and through than the bully is increased.
Bullying via social media leaves a person humiliated, lonely, and vulnerable since bullying follows one everywhere through their devices. Through social media, it is difficult to feel safe or even escape. Once a bullying post goes viral, people find themselves being attacked by many people some of whom do not even know them which makes it even more humiliating ( Garett, Lord, & Young, 2016) .
People and Age within Which Social media Bullying Occurs Most
Bullying through social media has affected the teens more. In the United States, it has become a concern for teens. For the teens, cyberbullying involves using social media to write information that is embarrassing, hateful or aggressive about or to peers to intimidate, control, or shame them. Around 90% of the teenagers in 2018 were reported to have smartphones which are an increase of 22% between 2014 and 2015 ( Anderson, 2018) . More than have of the number have notified being online most of the time, and with the given increased online activities, they become victims, perpetrators or even witnesses to bullying.
Among the teens that use social media, around 75% of them use Facebook, and 54% have experienced cyberbullying. 21% of the 66% teen who uses YouTube have been bullied, 28% of the 43% of teens who use Twitter have also experienced bullying. While this is just from the commonly used platforms, the number is even more significant when the number of teens who experience bullying from other platforms is added ( Anderson, 2018) . In general, with the rise of the use of social media and smartphones, 54% of the teens who use social media in the United States have experienced one or more types of bullying personally.
42% of the teens have experience name-calling type of cyberbullying, 32% have reported that false rumours have been spread about them, 25% received images that were explicit and did not ask for, 16% have received physical threats, and 7% have had representations that explicit about them being shared on social media without their consent.
Teen girls and boys are likely to be bullied on social media equally with only differences that are slight in specific harassment types that the teens encounter. In general, 59% and 60% of boys and girls experience one or more types of bullying on social media ( Anderson, 2018) . Boys and girls have encountered bullying such as being called names, and physical threats through social media equally, but other forms of cyberbullying are more prevalent in teen girls than boys. For example, 39% of the teen girls reported that false rumours had been spread about them in 2018 as compared to 26% of the teen boys who said the same type of bullying in the same year.
The teen girls were also more prone to receiving images that are explicit that they never asked for (29% girls and 20% boys). 9% of the teen girls also reported having images that are explicit about them being shared on social media without their consent ( Anderson, 2018) . Generally, it can be declared that bullying in social media mostly affects the teen between the age of 13 and 19.
Toxic Mix of Circumstances that Cause Bullying on Social Media
Bullying in social media is caused by a variety of circumstances ranging from anger, jealousy, boredom, family issues, and even insecurity. Some studies have indicated that the majority of people believe that social media bullies do it for fun which has been suggested to be 64%. A more disturbing fact is that one in five people perceive bullying in social media as a new act since most teens think that the use of social media for acts that are aggressive is creative ( Li, 2010) .
Teens, especially those who feel that they are more popular, tend to cyberbully teens who are less or not accessible. Popularity has been identified with cyberbullying among teens. Teens who aim at trying to climb social ladders or gain social power at school resort to cyberbullying to acquire attention. They also bully so that to destroy the social status of the bully-victims.
The social status of the teens' families also determines their ability to bully on social media. Teens who come from wealthy families tend to bully other teens on social media since they feel that they are more superior and luckier than teens from poor families. Equally, those teens who come from poor families also bully other teens on social media. These teens believe that bullying other teens help them to cope with situations of low self-esteem ( Bevilacqua et al., 2017) . They also think that bullying on social media will help them fit in well with other peers, and they also have a problem with empathizing with the teens that hurt through social media bullying.
The family status also leads to bullying in social media in the sense that, those families who are faced with challenges such as domestic violence, child labour, and abuse tend to be victims of social media bullying as well as perpetrators. For example, a teen who comes from a family where parents are always away since they keep on fighting day in day out resort to social media bullying. Teens that arise from such families tend to be depressed, angry, and furious all the time and they resort to intimidation on social media to hide their frustrations as well as acquire the feeling of acceptability when other people join in the bullying. Teens from such families have violence and aggression modelled in them. Such teens also tend to be bullied on social media by their peers who know about their situation ( Li, 2010) . The violence among parents, their permissiveness or absenteeism gives the teens some sense of control and power which lacks in their lives.
Researchers have found out that some individual characteristics of schools that the teens attend influence their behaviour of bullying on social media. For example, the neighbourhood where the school is located and the school size are significantly associated with cyberbullying behaviours. Schools with a large number of students have higher rates of cyberbullying since monitoring is not accessible by the teachers.
Disabilities also result in social media bullying. Social media bullies ridicule mental problems and limitations. Teens with such challenges are bullied a lot, especially on instances where awareness is not created to make the bullies understand the conditions. Teens with conditions such as reading problems, autism, and physical defects are victims of bullying on social media.
Payback for bully by the teens: Those teens who have been bullied in their lives tend to seek revenge or retaliate through bullying. Since social media has a comprehensive platform for bullying in which many people can view comments and images, it makes it easy for a teen that has been tormented and harassed before revenge. For example, a teen from with violence as indicated above, if bullied they revenge by doing the same ( Bevilacqua et al., 2017) . Bullying other people on social media makes the once victims bully to have a feeling of relief as well as justification for what they experienced before.
The fact that bullying on social media allows anonymity makes the bullying to increase the more. The perpetrators of bullying on social media can hide their identity through fake accounts or taking other people's identities hence this kind of bullying does not require a lot of courage, and there is the illusion that one cannot get caught.
Restriction on Social Media
Restriction on social media should be done for all kids, both high school and junior high. Given the increased advancement in the internet and technology as well as their use and need, it is difficult to ban the kids from using social media hence restriction is the best strategy ( Garett, Lord, & Young, 2016) . Restricting kids from using social media platforms can lead to a reduction in cyberbullying. This should be accompanied by creating awareness and educating the kids on the cyberbully dangers, what it entails, and how it can be prevented.
It is difficult to prevent the kids from using social media since they will always have access to smartphones and tablets, but they can restrict their use of social media through the detection of content that is explicit. This can be done through alerts that are exclusive whenever they spot signs of cyberbullying from their children’s Facebook, Twitter, Messenger, and all other social media platforms.
The parents should reduce the usage of social media by their children by reducing the time they spend on their phones. The more the time the kids spend on social media, the more they are likely to be social media bullies and experience it. Parents can also monitor what the kids do with their phones and tablets and control the obsessive usage by limiting the time that kids are on the screens. The parents should also block apps that are harmful to prevent the kids from bullying on social media.
References
Anderson, M. (2018). A majority of teens have experienced some form of cyberbullying.
Bevilacqua, L., Shackleton, N., Hale, D., Allen, E., Bond, L., Christie, D., ... & Miners, A. (2017). The role of family and school-level factors in bullying and cyberbullying: a cross-sectional study. BMC pediatrics , 17 (1), 160.
Garett, R., Lord, L. R., & Young, S. D. (2016). Associations between social media and cyberbullying: a review of the literature. Health , 2 .
Leviner, M. (2018). Cyberbullying And Social Media Responsibility In Schools.
Li, Q. (2010). Cyberbullying in high schools: A study of students' behaviours and beliefs about this new phenomenon. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma , 19 (4), 372-392.
