Cyberbullying on Instagram

Cyberbullying on Instagram Cyberbullying Research Center

Last time, I shared my viewpoints on Instagram safety in a general way. Today, I’m going to talk about cyberbullying that occurs on Instagram. As I mentioned, Instagram is minimalistic and intentionally doesn’t provide a lot of features that you might find on Facebook. This also means that various forms of victimization – identity theft, impersonation, intellectual property theft, grooming by sexual predators, private threats, and hate speech going completely viral – are rarely going to happen. In what ways, though, can you bully, mistreat, or humiliate someone on the site?

1. You can post a malicious or embarrassing photo of a target for all of your followers to see.

2. You can caption a gross or disgusting or otherwise insulting or demeaning photo with a target’s username and perhaps a negative sentiment (for example, uploading a picture of a sumo wrestler and then captioning with something like “this reminds me of @hinduja”…I’ll let your mind come up with much more offensive and hurtful examples)

3. You can post cruel comments under a photo that someone posts.

4. Different than adding a username in a caption or a comment, you can tag a user through the new “Add People” feature on the Share screen – where the tag is added to the image itself. If your Instagram profile is  public, anyone can see it – and it could go viral. If your profile is private, and the target is not following you, they will not be notified or be able to see the photo, tag(s), caption, comments. Which could be completely awful, where they are humiliated or harassed until a sympathetic friend finally clues them in.

4. You can add hateful hashtags under a photo that you post (in the caption or comments) or that someone else posts (in the comments). For example, #dork or #loser or #fuglyslut or #tryweightwatchers or #crackwhore or #cantbelievesheworethat or #peoplewhoshouldoffthemselves. Once again, I’ll let your mind come up with a million more that are so much worse.

5. You can create a fake account to impersonate someone else, and be cruel through pictures, captions, comments, and hashtags.

Cyberbullying on Instagram

Here are a few stories from some teens who have talked with us about their experiences on Instagram:

“Last year I got an Instagram account made about me. The got pictures off my Instagram and posted it on theirs. I was being called a w****, s***, and a b****. I was so upset, that I self-harmed. But then I realized that I had to stay strong so I stopped. Then on may 2 I got 4 more made about me and doing the same thing except calling me a lesbian. This time I got help, and it got taken down. From this day police are still trying to find out who made the account. Stay. Strong.” 13 year-old girl from Tennessee

“I am 18 years old. This year on the 2nd week of school, I parked my car crooked. A girl in my class took a picture of it and put it on Instagram stating that I couldn’t park because I was deaf. That picture circulated. A boy in my class posted on twitter the next day “Tomorrow is national Park like a Retard day. AKA park like “MB day”. The next day 30 cars parked crooked in the school parking lot. I went to the office and told my principal and he put parking tickets on their windows. My name was all over twitter and Facebook and everyone tried to make an a** out of me.” ~ 18 year-old female from Pennsylvania

“I posted a picture of myself on Instagram and people started commeting these awful things like “Eww ur so ugly” “Why don’t you go kill urslef everyone would be happier that way” And I KNOW these people…they go to my school. I cried for a good 2 hours. But this wasn’t the first time this has happened on all my pictures at least 3 people say something like that. I’m never going on Instagram again. I wish I could disapear so I don’t I have to go to school.” ~ 12 year-old girl from Colorado

To be sure, these unfortunate, sad, and frustrating experiences could have occurred to youth in any online environment. Instagram is not the problem. Social media is not the problem. Technology is not the problem. It is the underlying issues of peer conflict, immaturity, insecurity, ethics, socioemotional dysfunctions, and behavioral issues that foster instances of online bullying among individuals. And that is something we must all continue to target, so that we can make further headway in safeguarding, equipping, and empowering our youth as they navigate the difficult waters of adolescence. Next time we’ll discuss how cyberbullying can be prevented and combated on Instagram.

21 Comments

  1. Good article, Sameer. It’s sad that kids are targeting people even on Instagram now. There have been many who shifted to Instagram from Facebook just to keep things less complicated. But, bullies always seem to find a way to bully.

  2. Good article, Sameer. It’s sad that kids are targeting people even on Instagram now. There have been many who shifted to Instagram from Facebook just to keep things less complicated. But, bullies always seem to find a way to bully.

  3. i have instagram. im 13. i put on the private settings and only let my close friends follow me as well as my family. it really depends what you share :/

  4. One day when I got home, I was having a nice day, and then I read my Instagram notifications. Two different boys were commenting on my posts about how I was ugly and that I had this huge ugly unibrow… They called me a wh*re and said that I wasn’t human. I cried. Then I realized that these boys were just 2 jerks with nothing better to do with their lives. It was still pretty unsettling to come home to those though… 🙁

  5. One day when I got home, I was having a nice day, and then I read my Instagram notifications. Two different boys were commenting on my posts about how I was ugly and that I had this huge ugly unibrow… They called me a wh*re and said that I wasn’t human. I cried. Then I realized that these boys were just 2 jerks with nothing better to do with their lives. It was still pretty unsettling to come home to those though… 🙁

  6. I got into a fight with someone online. I sent her a private message saying we should just resolve it. She refused to look at it and started calling me a b**** and telling me to f*** off. Cyberbullying is never okay. It needs to stop.

  7. I was cyber bullied in the 5th grade on a game people where saying don’t hang with her when I was on the chat rooms in the game i was playing. I deleted my game account. 🙁

  8. Dear Madam/Sir

    I have an account on Instagram hrishov.alexandra .
    For many months the employees of Instagram hv changed the texts under the posts I see , check accounts to follow in my place that I dont follow , choose really offensive texts from other accounts to appear on my screen and on my feeds , write their own texts under the posts of peoples accounts that I follow which gets really offensive .
    Due to this I felt my life was in danger because they chosen accounts showing pictures with burnt faces of girls, or women with amputated limbs and other horrible posts which they particularly chose to place on the search button feeds from the various accounts from Instagram , n extremely offensive texts .
    I felt really threatened n they linked the threats as a message from Eminem since they often put photos n posts of his even if numerous times I pressed the spam option n content I don't want to see.
    If I would report the posts they say they see nothing wrong with it , relying on the fact that the post is from somebody elses account .
    I don't know how to stop this from happening since the employees working for Instagram Romania seem to spend their time at work having fun by harassing me on my account. They currently put a lot of accounts on my follow list which I didn't personally follow.

    Besides being threatened they seem to hv a lot of fun cyberbullying n offending me . They also seem to share my private messages n go against the privacy policy hurting my life n my image , n making me feel constantly threatened.

    I don't know whom to address this issue to in order to be resolved since Instagram Romania is not very cooperative n I don't hv address where I can file this complaint for the misconduct n abuse of Instagram employees

    Sincerely ,
    Hrishov Alexandra

  9. Adult bullies are an issue too. The user bonblueyogababe has been taunting my sister who has chronic health issues for years. She gets away with it by doing a hashtag followed by my sister’s initials. Everyone knows who she is referring to. What makes me sick is that none of her followers speak up, some even encourage. She plays off as some strong woman who owns some headband business called hed peace geared towards helping people who need help to find their voice but when I nominated my sister for a benefit and she got it, this wack job taunted her over it and her husband sent a letter to the event organizers claiming fraud! This also affected me as the event organizers were a part of the organization I worked for! I and several others have used Instagrams report system but nothing has been done.

    • Agreed, Debi. Adults also cause these types of issues. What you are describing, though, doesn’t sound like cyberbullying. Rather, it sounds like someone being a jerk and a liar and a crappy person. Instagram doesn’t have policies against that.

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