Cyberbullying: How to Spot It and How to Stop It

About 3 in 5 US teenagers say they’ve been bullied online and, let’s be honest, we’ve all seen it happen to someone else. Sometimes hateful comments just hurt. Other times they could contribute to depression, anxiety, loss of confidence, or feelings of worthlessness.

Most young people agree social media platforms aren’t doing enough to monitor hateful content. The good news is, you can do something to curb cyberbullying now and challenge platforms to step up. Keep reading to learn how to spot online harassment. Then sign up to flag content and Shred Hate with DoSomething, ESPN, MLB, and No Bully to create a better, safer internet for everyone. Let’s Do This.

What Counts as Cyberbullying?

Cyberbullying includes any form of electronic communications which are intentionally used to hurt, threaten, or embarrass another person. It could include harassment, mean comments, starting rumors, or a bunch of other stuff too. Cyberbullying might take the form of:

• Hurtful gossip pages on Instagram (or any other social platform)
• False impersonation profiles on Facebook (or any other social platform) that portray someone in a bad way
• Mean or derogatory comments left on someone’s photo or post
• Derogatory posts about someone on a Finsta page
• Sending threats or repeatedly harassing someone through DMs or messages
• Posting malicious or embarrassing photos as “blackmail moments”
• Tagging people in unrelated photos to insult them (e.g., “this reminds me of you @username”)
• Creating subtweet threads to diss someone
• Adding mean hashtags under photos
• Posting screenshots of private messages
• Forwarding private messages to others or uploading private pictures publicly
• Uploading embarrassing screenshots of someone
• Photoshopping and reposting someone’s photo without their consent

What NOT to Do About Cyberbullying

It may seem like calling out a bully online is a good idea, but it’s almost never a good idea. Responding to intentionally hateful or hurtful content just calls more attention to the negativity, gives a bigger platform to the bully, and can even cause them to turn their negativity on you. The best thing to do is block that account and use the platform’s built-in tools to anonymously flag and report cyberbullying. Read on to learn how.

How to Anonymously Report Cyberbullying

All the main social media platforms have systems for you to flag hateful content. If you see any of the content above, anonymously report it. The person who posted it will receive a warning (they won’t see who flagged them) and could even have their account shut down. Plus, the more we flag, the more we encourage platforms to step up in policing this kind of content. Here’s how to get started.

Instagram

Instagram is also testing out a feature that allows you to restrict users who leave mean or unwanted comments on your posts. This won't block the user and they won't even know they've been restricted — but it saves you from having to deal with the hate! The catch is that you can only use the “Restrict” function on your own page, so flagging and reporting comments you see elsewhere will still be a useful tool in your arsenal!

Take it to the next level by auto-filtering comments you don't want to see on your Insta page — you can set up a filter that will hide comments containing specific words, phrases, numbers and even emojis that you'd just rather avoid.

Ready to flag content you see on insta? Here’s how:

Twitter

How to flag and report on Twitter:

YouTube

How to flag and report on YouTube: