제 9 호 Emotional Abuse of University Students
Young People’s Inside Is Being Rotten
Kicker: SOCIETY (MENTAL VIOLENCE)
Emotional Abuse of University Students
Young People’s Inside Is Being Rotten
By Yoo-Jung Kim, Editor-in-Chief / Sol-Hyang Park, Reporter
kyjmimi121@naver.com / cookie7152@naver.com
"Don't show up, die quietly." "You can't die just saying I want to die." These are the comments on a post written by a Seoul Women's University student last year on “Everytime,” a university student community anonymous app. The student uploaded several posts on Everytime to gain mental comfort, but some users wrote malicious comments like mentioned. In the end, she made an extreme choice in October last year. This kind of emotional abuse is now prevalent among university students.
What Is Emotional Abuse?
Emotional abuse, often called psychological abuse, is a form of abuse committing mental violence - insulting, embarrassing, frightening, or otherwise manipulating someone emotionally. Closely related to verbal abuse, it is very common in any relationship and appeared in various ways. It includes bullying in school or workplaces, gaslighting, or writing malicious comments online, etc.
In fact, emotional abuse is hard to define the range. Therefore, it is hard to recognize it. It can be subtle, overt, manipulative – slowly threatens someone’s mental state, not easily being noticed. It may lead to psychological trauma, including anxiety, chronic depression, or PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder.) It breaks down one person, making one have no reason for living.
The Digital Prison Accident
Especially these days, emotional abuse is prevalent on the Internet among young people. Besides the accident mentioned above, there was a digital prison accident last year. It was an accident that a 20-year-old University student committed suicide, as his personal information was exposed on a website “digital prison”, where illegally disseminated personal information was revealed. The site was opened around March 2020, introducing itself as a site revealing personal information of malicious criminals in South Korea. However, they subjectively defined the criminal, and even disseminated personal information of non-criminal people.
<A translation of a real digital prison site>
The student was one of the victims of the site. In July of 2020, the site posted his personal information such as his photos, school number, major and phone number saying that he asked someone to edit photos of acquaintances into pornography. The student explained he had never done that on his school Everytime, but the site kept his identity public. He had been under a lot of stress from malicious comments and threats, and eventually committed suicide.
The police arrested a first site operatorin Vietnam, who was a drug offender and also operated the “Nth room.” It was found that he made the site to spread judicial distrust and disturb public trust in order, to cover up his crime. The site is now blocked, and the police are continuing to investigating a second operator.
Emotional Abuse of University Students
There is a tendency to abuse others emotionally by behaving anonymously on the Internet or in certain communities and posting negative comments. This trend is also occurring frequently among university students. Based on the previous case, the frequency and severity of emotional abuse among university students is increasing, but it is a big problem to think of it as a simple joke rather than recognizing it as "emotional abuse."
Recently, there was an incident in which a teacher abused his students emotionally. We can see that university students who have committed and received emotional abuse become members of society. It should be recognized that emotional abuse, from children to university students to adults, affects each other, and has a negative impact. It is difficult to clearly determine the standard of emotional abuse, so there are not many related countermeasures or appropriate laws. These points make it difficult to establish solutions to fundamental emotional abuse.
The Attitude We Need to Have
Therefore, university students need to recognize the meaning of emotional abuse. In particular, in Everytime, which is famous for its community of university students, one should think from another's perspective, comment or writing. Socially, laws and systems should be discussed to protect those in need from emotional abuse by others. Rather than criticizing others, an attitude of understanding and thinking from the perspective of the person is necessary for everyone who is hidden under anonymity beyond university students.
These days, both perpetrators and victims of emotional abuse are younger more than before and the intensity of emotional abuse is stronger. I hope we live a useful life rather than hurting each other in a community where everyone lives together. In particular, as students of Sangmyung University, I hope we can all become students of Sangmyung University who think, talk, act, and have a positive impact on each other.
Sources :
https://www.ibabynews.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=43627
https://news.mt.co.kr/mtview.php?no=2020112417202090730
https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20200905041500004
http://www.civicnews.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=30228
https://www.womennews.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=202669
