“They [grandparents and parents] rushed home to their house in Texas City, Texas, where they found Brandy in her room with a gun. The family pleaded with the teen not to pull the trigger. But Brandy had made up her mind.”(CNN Wire). Brandy was a victim of cyberbullying. Her sister said to Fox News, “People would make up fake Facebook accounts and they would message her and she wouldn’t respond and they would still come at her,” and “They would say really, really mean things like, ‘Why are you still here?’ They would call her fat and ugly.” This didn't happen multiple years ago, or even one year ago, it happened on December 1, 2016, only a couple months ago. This heartbreaking story of a girl who was only 18 years old shows how important this prominent issue of cyberbullying is. It is imperative that social media takes action immediately to put a stop to teen cyberbullying.

There needs to be consequences for kids caught cyberbullying. Currently, cyber bullies aren't given consequences for their actions. If there are no punishments, they won't stop because the bullying is just affecting the victim, not them. When the victim or a bystander reports an act of cyberbullying, the post is simply hidden. Once a cyberbully is reported, that person should have their account suspended. In order to gain access to their account again, they should have to go through a short education course. This system would be efficient because the bullies would learn from their mistakes. However, some believe that giving punishments would be violating freedom of speech. They also may feel that they are not allowed to share their opinion, and may believe that the “fun” of that app has been eliminated. But, when no consequences are given, how are kids supposed to learn? Research shows that kids will stop when having to deal with the aftermath of the problem they created. Jim Taylor P.h.D, a teacher at the University of San Francisco specializing in the psychology of parenting, wrote “Every time a child is let off without a consequence for failing to meet an expectation, the value of the expectation is lost.” More than one million kids each year are receiving cyber threats and that is not acceptable, a simple education for the bully on what they did could reduce this statistic.

Cyberbullying is prevalent because of the anonymity of social media. When people don't have to live up to their actions they can say exceedingly mean comments that they wouldn't have otherwise said to the victim's face. Almost all countries have a helpline for bullying. In the last five years, the U.K.’s helpline “has seen an 88 percent increase”(Newsweek) in the number of cyberbullied children that have been helped. “A report, released by Childline [another U.K. helpline], states that bullying remains one of the most common reasons why children contact the service. It has been one of the top five concerns every year since 1989, with 25,740 counseling sessions held from 2015 to 2016” (Newsweek). Since most social media accounts remain anonymous and untraceable, cyberbullying is growing larger. Without knowing who did it, police are failing to press charges and convict the bullies. Still, even knowing this growing number, some people choose to believe that bullying has been around for a long time and physical bullying is more powerful. They believe that children are able to just ignore cyberbullying; however, physical bullying can not be walked away from. Police investigators say that they cannot do anything unless there is a physical engagement. The problem is that teens can't ignore these crimes of cyberbullying. Brandy, the girl who shot herself in front of her family, even changed her phone number, but the bullies persisted. Cyberbullying is an increasing problem that is continuing to grow with untraceable accounts on social media and it cannot be ignored.

Social media has the ability to add more restrictions on posts, which will be necessary to stop cyberbullying. Social media apps like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat need to add more restrictions. Image Vision, a technology company, is creating image and text scanning resources to eliminate demeaning or inappropriate posts. In addition, there are some social media apps that are starting to develop ways to solve this issue. “Yik Yak has tried to mitigate the dangers of anonymity with a number of innovative, protective design features that constrain users” (WIRED). For example, the app includes a “thumb” tool that removes posts that receive five “downvotes”. But still, these features are not enough. Even though these efforts are progressing, all social media needs to help with this crime. It could be argued by some that social media is getting too invasive. These people claim that social media shouldn't have control over your account.  Nevertheless, if social media needs to interject for cyberbullying and teen suicides to be abolished, then restrictions are what needs to happen.

Cyberbullying is an issue that more than one in three people have experienced (Bullying Statistics). This issue is greater than most realize, but we can stop it. Cyberbullying is a powerful force because of the anonymity of social media and it is not something that can be ignored. Two ways to solve this ever growing issue is prevention and discipline. Social media must take their part in helping the lives of teens by adding restrictions and using new solutions to find the crime before it happens. A law needs to be created to restrict users from their account until an education program is completed. Every day more kids are being hurt and we can not stand around and watch, we need to use our resources to put an end this crime immediately.