Internet refers to the communicational centre all over the world in sharing information and computing capacity. According to the development of the Internet, transforming to be a digital era is significant change with digital economic management idea. Internet become the new media which it provides a broad space for people to communicate and display their talents. However, the abuse of freedom of speech on the Internet that has caused a series of social problems. It is like a double-edged sword which infringes on right of citizens in privacy and reputation although it plays a positive role at the same time. Should the government adopt some laws and policies to prevent this from happening? Will the speaker be held responsible and punished?
-Cyberbullying for female
During the development of the Internet, cyberbullying is emerged which refers to the behaviour of defaming or insulting others via fabricating facts and gratuitous abuse. This will cause psychological harm to the parties concerned and adversely affect the network environment. However, female suffered from the cyberbullying which occupy the great population. There are 38.3 percent of the adolescent girls who suffered from the online harassment. (Amanda, Sameer, & Justin, 2009) Cyberbullying has led some young women to stop or use social media less with nearly 60 percent experiencing online harassment. When the reality of discrimination against women is presented in the form of cyber violence, the sexual harassment and gender denigration of women will be exported in the form of cyber verbal violence. The transformation of the matriarchal society into a patriarchal society which is the first cause of discrimination against women in the following thousands of years. The online give the definition of female by criticizing appearance and body of woman leads to self-doubt and extreme anxiety.
Online abusers rarely take into account the feelings of the victims of violence when they express their opinions and do not have a clear understanding of the reality that their words will hurt feelings of female. Social networks give individual groups a greater platform to output their approval through likes which a crowd gathers in this simple click. According to the Ted talk, the influence form the online harassment is hard to stop. The management for the web site to block them or telling their parent which are useless for control this situation. In addition, rethink enable to change people who want to speak free in the Internet. The percentage of 93.4 of the time for using rethink due to change their minds from adolescents. The offensive message has dropped significantly from 71% to 4%.
“Stop Cyberbullying Before the Damage is Done” by TED talk. Retired from Youtube.
-Online sexual harassment on the Internet
With the popularity of the Internet, most people are using the Internet for sexual harassment. The victims are women which the perpetrators use the Internet as a medium to infiltrate the mobile phones or computers of the victims and mentally molest them. Online sexual harassment is the extension of sexual harassment in cyberspace which refers to the sexual provocation of others in the form of words, pictures and videos causing discomfort and disgust. Sending sexual harassment messages is a common form mainly in social networking sites, chat software, live video and game interface by sending sexually suggestive and uncomfortable messages. According to the news, South Korean actress Goo Hara who died last year which was threatened by her boyfriend to post a video of the two of them having sex on the Internet. The citizen triggers a “Sister is Coming” protest by South Korean women where more than 185,000 people took part in a protest against revenge porn. It could be seen that the power of the network is great which could break down the inner defence line in the psychological. Perpetrators use their own identity, status and power to target vulnerable women who do not dare to resist, expose by verbal or physical harassment. By observing and analysing the content of a platform, they may find the accounts of other platforms where more victims are violated, and even find the privacy information such as home address and phone number of the victims which will continuously expand the scope of sexual harassment. The Internet expose individual information have harmful effect on individual privacy. (Kelty, 2014) However, the campaign of “Me Too” which advocate for women to speak up about their experiences of harassment using group effects to encourage each other. The reputation of this is increasing with self-awareness of woman and “girls help girls” are weaving a net of mutual protection.
-Affecting mental health of the youth
The content of communication has specific values and ideological tendencies which are always imperceptibly cultivated to form values and outlook of people on life. Most of the online games contain violent information, and children who have been exposed to violent information for a long time will be engraved with the brand of “violence” deep in their subconscious. Children and adolescents who have been affected by cyber violence for a long time have strong aggression in their heart which weakens their ability to empathize and seriously isolates their emotions. The discrimination ability of minors is relatively poor that they use more primitive psychological defence mechanism. (Bárbara, Sónia, Isabel, & Paula, 2022) Their understanding of the world is not objective and rational, so it is easy to confuse the actual situation of the society and the actual situation of the media. The culture of pornography and violence spread on the Internet media directly induces the tendency of teenagers to commit violent crimes which is a cancer in recent society. Hatred and terrorist ideas spread on the Internet affect the society and are not conducive to the healthy growth of young people. Disseminating ability for youth of critical discrimination which use of various network information and culture to strengthen their literacy education due to improve their immunity to network information.
-How to stop the influences from the Internet?
These problematic influences on the Internet which disrupting social and public order and undermines the credibility of cyberspace. While Internet technology has expanded the freedom of speech enjoyed by people, it has not timely restricted the freedom of speech on the Internet that has not established the necessary protection system for the rights of others. Abusers should be responsible for their own speech in order to set up laws and policies to control the negative effects of the Internet. Firstly, improving the Internet network moral literacy and legal awareness from users which resolutely resist the damage to network civilization and network harmony. The media platforms should strengthen the publicity of network civilization construction due to criticize openly and expose the uncivilized phenomenon that the public reflects strongly. (Flew, Martin, & Suzor, 2019) Besides, according to the severity of the damage caused by the rumour maker so that the victim could properly choose to apply the relevant legal norms for safeguarding his legitimate rights and interests. Using public reputation of celebrity could spread widely to advocate the protection for female who suffered from cyberbullying. To the adolescents, occupy the voice and dominant position in cyberspace to spread a positive and healthy outlook on life. Schools and families should shoulder the responsibility of educating and managing students. By guiding students to use network resources healthily to acquire useful knowledge in the promiscuous network space.
-Conclusion
The Internet brings us unlimited knowledge and vast amounts of information. The Internet has narrowed the distance between each other that turned the global village from theory to reality. For the changes brought by the Internet to our lives, people seem to have not been ready for the full psychological preparation so for the social problems derived from the network that most people more or less show some panic. Every coin has two sides, the Internet is the same. We should not only enjoy the convenience brought by the network for our life, but also correctly read these negative effects brought by the network so that the network truly serves human beings.
References
Amanda, B., Sameer, H., & Justin, P. (2009). Cyberbullying Research Summary . Victimization of adolescent girls .
Bárbara, M., Sónia, C., Isabel, A., & Paula, F. (2022). Mapping the Cyber Interpersonal Violence among Young Populations: A Scoping Review. social sciences, 2-16.
Flew, T., Martin, F., & Suzor, N. (2019). Internet regulation as media policy: Rethinking the question of digital communication platform governance. Journal of Digital Media & Policy, 10(1), 33–50.
Kelty, C. M. (2014). ‘The Fog of Freedom’. In T. Gillespie, P. J. Boczkowski and K. A. Foot (Eds.). Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society, 196-220.
K-Pop artist Goo Hara found dead at home aged 28. (2019, November 24). Retrieved from BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50535937
North, A. (2019, October 4). 7 positive changes that have come from the #MeToo movement. Retrieved from Vox: https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/10/4/20852639/me-too-movement-sexual-harassment-law-2019