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By Kate Halim
Some people have suffered cyberbullying, but they don’t know what it means or what they can do about it. In some cases, these victims of cyberbullying allow things to slide because they don’t want more problems. They run away from social media and recoil into their shells while hoping that their bullies will leave them alone and move on to other things.
Jessica Adebayo, a fashion designer based in Lagos told Saturday Sun that her cyberbullying experience has made her distrustful and paranoid. The mother of two stated that she is still recovering from the trauma she suffered at the hands of her cyberbully last year.
Adebayo said the whole thing started like a joke and before she knew what was happening, this person was tarnishing her image among her Facebook friends, posting her pictures on her Facebook friends’ comments section and calling her a prostitute.
She said: “I think it started with me rejecting a friend request from an unknown person on Facebook who didn’t have a profile picture. This account had a phoney name and I went through the person’s wall and profile after they sent me a friend request and concluded that the account was probably a fake account.”
Adebayo recalled that some days after that, one of her Facebook friends sent her a message asking if she offended anyone or said anything bad about someone, and she said no. She said that her friend now sent her messages from the owner of the account whose friend request she rejected.
“I was shocked when I read the messages this person sent to my friend. I thought that was the end of it, but I was wrong. Whenever any of my friends on Facebook made posts, this phantom account would comment on the post with my pictures body shaming me, calling me a bitter, frustrated prostitute and even threatening to kill me. I thought I could handle this but when he started sending the same derogatory messages to my husband and my boss, I got the police involved,” she said.
Adebayo confessed that dealing with a cyberbully for months left her anxious, fearful and paranoid. She said that she started suspecting everyone around her because some of the things the bully was saying about her life were known to some of her close friends. “I reported the case to the police. I made a post about being bullied on social media, I did a screenshot of the account bullying me and posted it on my wall. I made the post public and tagged the relevant authorities. That was how the bullying stopped. My husband and I wanted to get to the root of the matter by investigating the person behind the account but my mum begged us to drop the case so that we won’t be harmed.”
According to Adebayo, after her experience, she reduced her time on Facebook, limited interactions with people she didn’t know outside Facebook and locked her profile. “I don’t trust anybody these days. My cyberbullying experience has made me distrustful and paranoid but I hope to heal from the trauma soon,” she added.
For Chukwudi Otti, what started as a friendship on social media degenerated into a vicious attack on his person when things fell apart between him and his friend. Otti revealed that because he is introverted, he finds it hard to socialise and make friends so he resorted to making friends on social media.
Otti, a businessman who deals in fairly used electronics said he joined Facebook in 2014 and haven’t had any issues with anyone until he declined a money request from his friend earlier this year. “We have been friends on Facebook for over four years and have met a couple of times to eat, drink and have fun. He knows the kind of business I do and I know where he works as well. Things were going well for us until he requested that I loan him N500,000 to start a business. I thought about it for a while and wasn’t convinced about his business plan, so I told him that I don’t have such an amount of money to spare. That was the beginning of months of attacks against me and my integrity.”
Otti revealed that after turning his request down, he noticed that his friend became withdrawn from him. He added that he hardly responded to his messages and when he did, it was brief. “One day, I saw my picture circulating in a Facebook group with an attached post that made my jaw drop. A fake account which I later discovered was created the week before claimed that I was a scammer. The person behind the account claimed that I scammed them of N700,000 after they paid for goods which I didn’t deliver. The person also claimed that I blocked him on Whatsapp, Truecaller and Facebook.”
He said: “I thought it was a joke until this person created three different profiles with my first and last name and my pictures just to support their claim that I was a scammer. I was still trying to figure out what was happening and why and then this person started sending threatening messages to my friends and family members on Facebook on my behalf and claiming that he wouldn’t rest until he got his money back.”
Otti revealed that the actions of this person hurt him but he was determined to find out who was tarnishing his reputation. He said that he got a top cyber expert involved in the issue and after a while, it was discovered that his disgruntled friend was the one behind the fake accounts and the fake news that were making rounds on Facebook about him.
“When I found out my ex-friend was the one behind my cyber bullying ordeal, I got him arrested and warned him never to contact me again. Since then, I have been my own friend. I don’t allow anyone so close to me anymore. I still use Facebook actively for my business and I still engage my friends on the platform but I am very careful,” he stated.
When Rose Bassey fell out with her friends, she said she didn’t realise they would resort to cyberbullying her. According to the makeup artist, what started as a misunderstanding between friends degenerated into online attacks and character assassination.
Bassey told Saturday Sun that she became friends with four women on Facebook after she discovered they had the same values and shared the same opinions on issues affecting women. “We bonded over our love for supporting women and shedding light on issues affecting women and girls in Nigeria. It was beautiful at first until I noticed some negative behaviour from these women. They were competitive, they lied a lot and they loved to show off. That’s not my style. I tried to accommodate their weaknesses but the more I kept quiet about some of the things they did, the more dissatisfied I became.”
She added that she tried talking to them about their behaviour and they refused to listen so she withdrew from them. “That was when they showed me their true colours. They started making posts and talking about imaginary haters who didn’t want them to continue shining. In these posts, they would reveal things that would make their followers know they were talking about me. I ignored them initially but when I couldn’t take it any longer, I called them out on their abuse.”
Bassey said they started sending her threatening messages and started turning her other friends against her. She added that one of them even used her picture on a character assassination post she made in a group and removed her from the group so that she wouldn’t state her own side of the story or defend herself. “This went on for about a month and it drained me because I hate bickering and fights. I had to deactivate my Facebook account for a while. This didn’t stop them. They took the bullying to Instagram and started making posts about me which were all lies. I also deactivated my Instagram account and blocked all of them on all social media platforms.”
Dr Adedotun Ajiboye, a clinical psychologist said that cyberbullying involves the use of information and communication technologies that support deliberate, hostile and often repeated behaviour by an individual or group that is intended to hurt others.
He added that cyberbullying is using electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature.
“It also includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else. It can include sharing personal or private information about someone else causing embarrassment or humiliation. Some cyberbullying crosses the line into unlawful or criminal behaviour.”
Ajiboye stated that some of the effects of cyberbullying include mental health issues such as fear, panic attack, suspicion, distrust, low self-esteem, insomnia, depression, psychosis etc. He added that other effects of being cyberbullied include increased stress, acting out violently and long-lasting emotional trauma even after the bullying has stopped.
“There should be increased sensitisation about the mental, psychosocial and academic effects of cyberbullying. It is possible that the perpetrators may not know these grievous effects. They may think that what they are doing has no major effects and take it as a joke. But with enlightenment, society will drastically refrain from cyberbullying. In addition, cyberbullying should be made punishable under the law. Our constitution should have something to say clearly on this deviant behaviour,” he added.
