Social Media: the

Chloe Outten

She loved life

Fourteen-year-old Adriana Kuch was an average girl, loved by her family. "She loved life,” says her father, Micheal Kuch “She was the happiest kid. Everybody love[d] her."

On February 1, Adriana was involved in a school fight at Central Regional High School in New Jersey. She was attacked by a gang of bullies, but despite several bruises on her body, she was not taken to the hospital

A video of the assault was posted on social media, complete with screenshots and nasty comments. TikTok failed to ban the video or flag it as bully behavior.

Adriana Kuch is a classic case of bullying. Almost. Because without alerting parents of its new nature, bullying has shifted.

It’s more permanent and more invasive in people’s lives. The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes cyberbullying as “the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature.”

Cyberbullying can occur in many different ways and can be done on multiple different platforms

Basically, the internet is a minefield of potentially harmful content, where the platforms themselves take zero accountability. But cyberbullying can take a step further into cyberharassment or even cyberstalking. Online exploitation is always dangerous, but it is often targeted at one of the most vulnerable groups of people Youth

Children are exploited on the internet from as young as two years old. These people are known as child influencers. Child influencers are a fairly new development but are very similar to child actors. Parents market their children in an attempt to get them a fan base and to make them money. However, unlike actors, there are no laws against how long or how hard child influencers have to work.

Some parents will

Courtesy of (AP post pictures and videos of their children practically from the first ultrasound, then follow them with a camera for years to come. Since people under the age of 13 cannot legally have an Instagram or YouTube account, these kids cannot legally make money off of their brand.

Children are exploited on the internet from as young as two years old.

Many family “channels” will purposefully try to upset their kids, filming breakdowns or even trips to the