Fareham Voices: We must protect our communities from cyberbullying

They are cowards and enjoy to inflict pain without being seen and I expect if you ask any professional person they will tell you that these people have many other issues.

More than 52 per cent of young people have reported online bullying and this indeed has to stop, and whilst the parents among us try to defend our children, we can only do so much.

Therefore we need to make our children safer by ensuring we go further by restricting certain sites which our children go on.

Perhaps we can get further help from sites like stopbullying.gov

We as a community need to restore order in our lives as we would prefer not to see yet another suicide of a young person which has stemmed from yet another case of cyberbullying.

We have many Facebook sites for Fareham including Fareham Aware and Voice for Portchester to name a couple but even at adult level these places can be just the environment for the cyberbully.

People who do this in my view must be made to pay a higher price, larger fines with naming and shaming in public so they also can feel what they themselves have caused others to feel.

They must also have their mobile phone removed and be suspended from the internet or online accounts for cyberbullying.

Cyberbullies may not realise the consequences for themselves. 

The things people post online now may reflect badly on them later when they apply for a position or a job. 

Also people should face legal charges for cyberbullying, and if the cyberbullying was sexual in nature this should result in the person being registered as a sex offender.

Teenagers may think that if they use a fake name they won't get caught, but there are many ways to track someone who is cyber bullying.

There will be those that think this is too strict but I believe we can't go far enough in protecting our community.