The problem:
The issue that I would like to be addressing in this project is how young people are facing cyberbullying through the use of social media and mobile devices. I would like to look at how this can affect their physical and mental health to see if there is a connection between traditional bullying and cyberbullying and also see if gender will affect how the victims are chosen. I want to look at how words can affect young people’s mind and see if I will be able to get my point across that words do hurt and what people say has an affect on you in a big way. I would like to look at an old saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words could never hurt me” this will help me address the issue that words do have an effect on you and how nasty messages will hurt you and I want to accomplish this through a creative and interesting way so I will be able to use it to impact the way people view cyberbullying.
The context:
The reason that I have chosen address this topic was because of the growing rate of cyberbullying and how it’s affecting people around and I would like to understand why this is happening and gain a better knowledge of how we as a society can help deal with the issue. The first article that I came across while doing my research on the topic and the one that has started me on the mini project was called “The impact of cyberbullying on young people” written by Ethan Miller and in this article he talked about a personal case of a girl name Sophie and how she was being cyber bullied by her peers at school,“the bullying had deeply affected Sophie’s mental health” (Miller, 2018) Sophie didn’t want to tell anyone about the problem and if one of her teachers didn’t pick up on her change of attitude then the issue could have ended badly because of the effect that was happing on her mental health. This article has significant information that I will be able to use in creating my project where I could make it personal to the audience and impact them to make a change on how they view cyberbullying.
The next article that I found that will help to gain a better understanding about how cyberbullying is affecting young people was written by The Telegraph where it addressed the issue of cyberbullying and how it “makes young people more than twice as likely to self-harm or attempt suicide” (Knapton, 2018) and this is because of the growing rate of how they can access social media platforms where most of these cyberbullying incidents normally occur.
When I was looking for inspiration on how to create my project, I came across this video. The creator was trying to get the point across that digital technology is a strong hold in our life and how we think we can’t live without it. The creator has put the question to us and it makes us think if our love for technology has made us blind to see what is really important in our life. This video addresses the issue of digital technologies having taken over our lives and how we are being bombarded by useless information every day.
This is another inspiration I came across, it was created by a website called textingstory.com, their aim was to create captivating content through a story being told by text messages. This has given me the idea of creating my project based on the same concept as this video.
The method:
The method that I will be using to address this issue will be practice based where I will be creating a video that will target the audience personally so it will make them think about how important it is to solve this problem together. I will also be conducting a survey where I will be asking the audience some questions relating to the project so I can get feedback in order to be able to identify if the practice based project has answered the hypothesis around the harmful use of social media where this is used as a tool to cyberbully other people.
The outcomes:
The outcome of this mini project is to inform the audience on the harmful uses of digital technologies such as mobile devices and also social media platforms where it could be used as a means to cyberbully other people. The end result that I would like to see would be that the project was able to make an impact on the audience where they could have a better understanding of how words can affect people by showing in a physical form. I would like to see that it is possible to make an impact on the way people view cyberbullying and get the audience to recognise that this is another form of bullying and there should be consequences for people taking part in this method of bullying. I would like to use this mini project to be addressing those people that need to have a better understanding of what this form of bullying can look like if it was to affect the victim physically. My main target audience are young people in high school because they are the biggest group that are affected by this of form of bullying and so to create this mini project for them will allow me to make an impact on the way they view cyberbullying and how it affects their peers or even themselves.
Bibliography:
Textingstory.com (2018). A short example of cyber bullying. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dFuKM5axTU [Accessed 18 Dec. 2018].
reMarkable (2018). Get your brain back. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcdxW2XF0v8&t=1s [Accessed 18 Dec. 2018].
Miller, E. (2018). The impact of cyberbullying on young people. [online] The Children’s Society. Available at: https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/news-and-blogs/our-blog/the-impact-of-cyberbullying-on-young-people [Accessed 18 Dec. 2018].
Knapton, S. (2018). Cyberbullying makes young people twice as likely to self harm or attempt suicide. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/04/22/cyberbullying-makes-young-people-twice-likely-self-harm-attempt/ [Accessed 18 Dec. 2018].
IMAP 