by Zoe Bishop

Created on: November 12, 2009

Bullying has always been around, but as some will know it is usually only found in the playground. Most people will have first hand experience of bullying. Maybe they were bullied as a child, or an adult even, maybe they know people who are close to them who have been victims, or maybe even worse, they were or are a bully. Fortunately, for kids in the playground bullying is usually easily remedied, they tell the teacher or another trusted adult who will ensure that the situation is solved permanently. Equally, adults that are bullied in the workplace for example, they can inform their boss who will sort the problem out. With the explosion of the Internet, though, users are presented with a new problem, cyber bullying. There are however, ways to avoid and prevent this from happening.

The main culprits of cyber bullying are more often than not, teenagers. The vast majority of people will have read those terrible, heartbreaking stories about teenagers who have been victims of cyber bullying that have felt so tortured and helpless that they have resorted to ending their own lives. This should not be happening. The problem that comes with Facebook is that it has become far to easy for bullies to find and target who ever they want. All they have to do is perform a simple search and they instantly have access to their targets. This is when the malicious messages, pictures, and wall posts come into the equation and when the trouble starts. This can be very intimidating, but there are things that a member of Facebook can do if they feel that they have become a victim of cyber bullying.

Firstly, there are some users that will target anyone to become their victim. They will send horrible messages trying to provoke a reaction from the user. These people are more often than not, but not always, teenagers. The bully sees it as a source of fun, but they do not realise how they can affect a person's life by making them a victim of cyber bullying. If a member is receiving nasty messages from someone that they don't know, the first thing that they should do is block the other member from contacting them. This can be done by clicking on the bullies profile. Even if they have it set to private, they 'Block' icon will still come up. All they need to do is click on that icon, and the user will no longer be able to contact them through messages, wall posts or otherwise. If the problem still persists from other users then the victim should report the bully to Facebook who will then

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