Cyber bullying can cause damage to people. (Photo: Courtesy)

By Carren Cherono

Nairobi, Kenya:  A few weeks ago my hairdresser told me that somebody had posted her number on a website that deals with escorts and call girls. At the beginning she could not understand why she was receiving a lot of “wrong number” calls, until one of the callers explained to her that her number had been posted on the site and he needed her “services”!

I could only imagine the agony she had to go through and worse explain to her husband why her phone was buzzing through the night. In the spirit of going digital, bullying has migrated also from physical to digital and worse it’s happening among adults.

Technology has given us many platforms to express ourselves, communicate and sadly destroy each other. Cyber bullying is the use of information technology to harm or harass other people in a deliberate, repeated, and hostile manner. It is becoming rampant in Kenya: many people are turning to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and various websites to get back at their “enemies’”

The lady reported the matter to the police but she was only advised to ignore the calls.

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 As a country we need to come up with ways to deal with cyber bullying to prevent further torture on innocent people. The Government should invest in technology that can trace IP addresses and should come up with laws to deal with cyber bullying.

On the other hand people should learn how to deal with each other face to face instead of using social media or other websites to attack each other.