TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Confronting The Bully In Cyberspace

ADVERTISEMENT

The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 6, 2007

The suicide of a Missouri teenager who was harassed online by a friend's mother makes you wonder what has become of good sense and good manners in this wired society.

The senseless death of 13-year-old Megan Meier has brought national attention to cyberbullying and the harm it can do to young psyches.

But there is no easy remedy.

Megan killed herself after striking up an online relationship with a person she thought was a boy named Josh. In reality, it was the mother of a friend who had set up a fake MySpace account to snoop on Megan.

The mother, Lori Drew, enlisted an 18-year-old employee to participate in the fraud. The conversations with Megan turned nasty, at one point someone wrote to Megan "the world would be a better place" without her.

It apparently was enough to send the emotionally troubled child over the edge.

Prosecutors could find no law under which to charge Drew, since the bullying wasn't carried out with the intent of driving Megan to suicide nor was the girl threatened with physical harm.

What the woman did was reprehensible, but it raises the legal quandary of even defining online harassment. Strict laws would require government to curtail citizens' freedom of expression, and it's impossible to legislate against people being mean.

Perhaps the best solutions are in educating Internet users and enforcing existing laws and rules which do apply to threatening behavior.

A University of New Hampshire study earlier this year found that 10 percent of 1,500 teenagers surveyed said they were victims of cyberbullying. Another survey by advocacy group Internet Solutions for Kids found one-third of the 1,500 teens it interviewed had been harassed online.
Hillsborough County schools have punished students who bullied classmates in chat rooms or on social networking sites when the tormenting was serious enough to frighten the victim to the point he or she wouldn't come to school. Schools also can discipline students who spread nasty rumors about teachers online.

But even this creative approach has its limits. For the bullying to be considered disruptive to the classroom, both the aggressor and victim must go the same school. Bullying that involves students from different schools - which wouldn't preclude the victim from attending class - falls outside the district's reach.

Megan's sad story should alert parents to the dangers of cyberbullying and the need to carefully monitor their children's online activities. It also should teach would-be bullies there are tragic consequences to their words, whether uttered in the school yard or in cyberspace.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT