Cyber bullying can lead to serious emotional consequences, including depression, low self-esteem, anxiety disorders and suicide. From this information, the Year 11 Health Education students decided to implement an action plan to minimise the prevalence of Cyber bullying and increase awareness among the Year 9 students at Meridan. The action plan allowed the Health Education students to develop three main hypotheses as to why Year 9 Meridan students’ cyber bully. Year 9 students at Meridan cyber bully because they think cyber bullying is anonymous and is therefore a low risk of getting caught; to increase their popularity; and to follow their peers. General consensus on wikianswers suggests that Socio-cultural factors are the larger scale forces within cultures and societies that affect the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of individuals.
The need to strengthen community action against cyber bullying and create a supportive environment within Meridan State College is imperative. Meridan State College does not have a set cyber bullying policy. Therefore the Year 11 Health Education class designed and incorporated an action plan to minimise cyber bullying. In order to gauge how effective the Year 11 Health Education class action plan was, a survey of 30 questions was designed to ask Year 9 students about various cyber bullying aspects, once the initial survey and action plan was finished, the survey was distributed to the Year 9 cohort again. Originally when asked whether students would block a bully after being harassed online 63% of students said they would, after the action plan.
