Isinulat ni: Seungjung Baek
With the proliferation and development of technology, a new world in social media has risen. Like how communication and interaction is done in the physical world, social media offers a chance to communicate and interact with each other without any physical limitation, allowing the exchange of ideas among people to become a simpler task. However, due to the anonymities of the people in that particular world, people tend to feel a sense of protection, leading them to easily act out their inner selves unscrupulously. Because of the catcalls people send to some particular people in social media, these peoples’ rights are often ignored and tainted. In the U.S., a 12-year-old girl committed suicide after being targeted for cyberbullying in 2013 (The Guardian, 2013). In Singapore, 28.5% were the targets of nasty online comments in 2013 (Kwan, G.C.E. and Skoric, 2013). Recently, already 3 controversial deaths of K-pop stars were recorded in Korea since 2016, namely, Kim, Jonghyun, Choi, Jinli, and Koo, Hara. These three all had a similar cause which was their mental breakdown due to malicious comments leading them to depressions and finally death. Not only are the celebrities vulnerable to cyber bullying, but also any member of the society. According to Hinduja and Patchin (2016), generally 45.3% of the high school students aged 12-17 who participated in the cyberbullying research experienced being attacked by malicious comments. These malicious comments can be generally defined as defamation and hurtful comments or messages to a particular person which is done through the help of social media.
Malicious comments, people claim, is done 42.8% due to anonymity, 30.3% lack of responsibility, 11% due to online context climate, 8% due to lack of regulation and punishment, 5.8% due to commercial selfishness, and 2.1% due to other reasons.
Considering the causes which contributes to the proliferation of malicious comments online, authorities deemed several solutions to solve this issue. Since the eradication of anonymity cannot be executed because doing so will remove peoples’ rights and freedom, laws and policies applicable to this issue were just amendments of the original ones. For example, malicious comments can be sued for libel. There were no new laws or policies strictly concerning the incidents in social media. These slow progress of cyber bullying, specifically through malicious comments, resulted in the exacerbation of the people’s mental condition. According to Salem (2018), published in the journal Depression and Anxiety, the study found every 10 percent increase in negative social media experiences was associated with a 20 percent increase in the odds of reporting depressive symptoms, a statistically significant finding. As stated above, a recent appalling issue about Sulli or Choi, Jinli’s death awakened the minds of South Korea and the world. Due to this, a law called Sulli’s law was finally proposed last October 2019 and is still in line for approval. It is named after Sulli to make people discern the effects their comments can create. Sulli’s law is basically a law to prevent malicious comments. People who comments defaming words to anyone would be deleted from the platform and his or her IP address would be blocked to prevent future recurrences. To ratify this law, persistent effort and attention of the public is indispensable.
Bibliography
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- Kwan, G.C.E. and Skoric, M.M. Facebook bullying: An extension of battles in school. Computers in Human Behavior 29, 1 (2013), 16–25
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- The Guardian. Florida cyberbullying: Girls arrested after suicide of Rebecca Sedwick, 12. The Guardian (Oct. 15, 2013); http://www.theguardian.com/ world/2013/oct/15/florida-cyberbullying-rebeccasedwick-two-girls-arrested
- Why Cyberbullying Affects Girls More than Boys: Gaggle Speaks. (2019, January 8). Retrieved January 23, 2020, from https://www.gaggle.net/speaks/why-cyberbullying-affects-girls-more-than-boys/
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