This was an assignment I did about 9 months ago for a Computer Law class. It is the best course I have taken since I
got here. The lecturer, David Clark, is one very intelligent lawyer and
you can tell when he talks. You can tell he has a very good grasp of the
subject matter with lots of experiences to draw examples from. He is one dude I
look forward to listening to again. His classes are usually very interactive
but I still find a way 2 doze off ‘sha’. I didn’t however get a direct result for this assignment,
so I can’t really say how well I discussed the topic in his opinion. Anyways,
It’s long though but read and enjoy…..
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Cyberbullying was coined from two
English words; ‘cyber’ which means anything in the context of computers,
computer networks or virtual reality, and ‘bullying’ which is the act of
intimidating another person. Dictionary.com
defined cyberbullying as “the act of harassing someone
online by
sending or
posting mean messages,
usually anonymously” but cyberbullying is defined
in Legal glossaries as
- Actions
that use information and communication technologies to support deliberate,
repeated, and hostile behavior by an individual or group of individuals that
is intended to harm another or others.
- Use
of communication technologies for the intention of harming another person
- Use
of internet service and mobile technologies such as web pages and
discussion groups as well as instant messaging or SMS text messaging with
the intention of harming another person.
Cyberbullying was first
used by Bill Belsey, an anti-bully activist and he defined it as "the use
of information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated,
and hostile behavior by an individual or group that is intended to harm
others."
Bullying has always been a
part of the teenage life and will continue to be no matter the amount of resources
we put into eradicating it, it’s just human nature to desire superiority. We
can only try to mitigate its occurrence but the existence/improvement in
technology has continuously frustrated the effort, as it becomes more and more
difficult to create a control point. Since, school is the location where
bullying majorly takes place, it is only reasonable to control it from that
point. It is only reasonable to set Regulations for schools to properly address
the issue and sanction bullies as appropriate and make them understand the
implication of their actions. However, with technology becoming a part of our
everyday life, bullying has gotten to a whole new dimension where the bully
doesn’t even need physical contact with his/her victim to cause even far
greater harm to the victim. With cyberbullying the perpetrator can easily bully
someone else at the comfort of his room/house using either phone, social sites,
emails or text messages.
Cyberbullying can be as
simple as continuing to send e-mail or text harassing someone who has said they
want no further contact with the sender. It may also include public actions
such as repeated threats, sexual remarks, pejorative labels (i.e., hate speech
or defamatory false accusations), ganging up on a victim by making the person
the subject of ridicule in online forums, hacking into or vandalizing sites
about a person, and posting false statements as facts which is usually aimed at
discrediting or humiliating the targeted person. Also, with technology the
magnitude/effect of attack can easily be aggravated using the slightest efforts
while eliminating the ability to trace the indulgers (popularly known as trolls) in the act.
Moreover, it should be
noted that cyberstalking is much related to cyberbullying but still different
in the sense that they seek to address different age bracket. Cyberstalking can
be associated with Adults while cyberbullying is associated with teenagers and
children but cyberstalking is however well established compared to the
cyberbullying.
Internet Meets Bullying
With the internet age,
cyberbullying can’t help but flourish as people especially the young
generations practically live on the internet. Fine, the positive impact of the
internet on our day to day activities cannot be overemphasized as a whole lot
of things that were cumbersome in times past have been simplified. For example,
when you forget to copy a file from your home computer, you can just easily
connect remotely and there you go, you have your file without having to go back
home. But, the negative side of the internet and the harm it could cause is
becoming a concern as it's now a lot easier to engage in unlawfully act with
almost 100% anonymity. Internet, in itself cannot cause any harm but then can
be used as a vehicle/tool to cause harm by it users coupled with existing laws.
An example is the freedom of speech and expression in the US which liberates
anyone to express whatever pleases them and this include hate speeches not
considering the effect it might have on the subject party. So, imagine the havoc that can be caused with
a law that allows anyone to say whatever pleases him (lets use hate messages in
this case), coupled with internet (where you can magnify your message count by
encouraging people to help, where your message can reach its destination in a spilt
second), coupled with anonymity.
I was going through an
article and cyberbullying was presumed as a virus where the carriers don’t even
know they are carriers of the virus and it only takes a minimum level of
interaction to contact the virus. However, this virus feeds deeply on its
host’s emotions; examples are Hate, Anger, Envy, Insecurity and Peer pressure;
it only takes this emotions to be directed to one particular host till the host
becomes suppressed.
Cyberbullying, in the past
years have been identified as the major cause of depression and suicide among
teenagers and below is a set of statistics related to cyberbullying and
technology/internet ;
42% of teenagers that have
access to Technology have reported incidence of cyberbullying,
69% of teenagers own their
own computer or Smartphone device,
80% of these teens are
active on one or more social site’
The average US teen sends
420 text messages each week, that’s 60 texts a day, this is equal to 1 text
every 12 minutes; this is twice the
amount of text an average adult sends and girls between 14-17 sends an average
of 100 per day;
Everyday 1 in 3 kids aged
3 – 5 use the internet;
1 in 2 kids aged 6 – 9 use the internet;
7.5 million Users of Facebook
are under the age of 13; and 1 in 10 of these kids have reported being bullied
on the site (this means 750,000 kids, more than the total population of
Washington DC).
81% of youths say it’s
easier to get away with bullying online than in person.
Looking at the above
statistics we can agree that cyberbullying has reached a point where it has to
be "checkmated" and there are a number of approaches to solving this
problem; this could be, but not limited to law reforms, restrictions and awareness.
In addressing this issue,
we can clearly say this is an example of the fact that technology outpaces law,
gone are the days when there has to be a physical contact to bully and as a
result physical evidence can be seen on the victim to validate that he has been
bullied and the bully can’t easily get away unlike the cyber world. Also, guess
what? It has become a lot easier to bully and now a lot of people can join in
the act without even knowing who is being attacked. And unlike the real world,
when it comes to the internet what we call private isn’t exactly private, we
just want to believe its private. An example, is your real life one on one
conversation with your friend, that can be tagged as private but you can’t
exactly say your one on one conversation over the internet is private because
1. There are records of this chat which anyone could get hold of. 2. Anyone
with the right technology can even eavesdrop on the conversation without the
knowledge of the parties involved. So, on the internet, what we call private
isn’t really private. Now, let’s imagine a girl’s conversation with her crush
getting leaked to another girl who likes the same boy and the trauma she can
cause the other girl by posting this so called “private messages” online where
other school members can see it. The chances of this happening in the real
world are very slim as there will be no records of the conversation. Megan
Meier’s case of 2006 in the US where she committed suicide as a result of her
‘private massages’ being leaked and the reaction she got from the school
community.
Like it is often said, the
first step to solving a problem is identifying it has a problem and not until
then can we seek a true solution for it. Now that we have identified
cyberbullying as a problem that requires urgent solution, we can set to tackle
it and the first plain solutions I recommend is awareness. Even the bible says
“My people perish because they lack knowledge”, one will be surprised at the
number of people who don’t even know anything about cyberbullying. Campaigns
and awareness programs should be taken to the street in other to educate people
about cyberbullying. Just like I related cyberbullying to a virus earlier and
its host not even knowing he or she is a carrier of this deadly disease, people
help promote cyberbullying without even knowing it because they are made to
believe what is not and therefore unleash anger on some innocent, defenseless
soul. However, when we say awareness, what areas should these awareness
programs tackle?
- The awareness program should educate the affected population especially the teens on ways in which they can be ‘unintentionally’ involved in cyberbullying because with this age of internet, all you need to be involved or to promote cyberbullying is a few seconds of your time and a click. So, without even knowing they promote cyberbullying, seeing it as just having fun and being trendy.
- Another area the awareness program should address is ways in which people could prevent themselves from being cyberbullied. One major difference between bullying in reality and cyberbullying is the ability to prevent the effect on you. In physical bullying, you might not be able to prevent the pain a bully physically inflicts on you but in cyberbullying you can actually prevent the pain being inflicted just by ignoring the messages, blocking the channel of communication or by just totally staying off the internet for the time being. So, the cyberbullied need to be aware of ways they can reduce the effect on themselves.
- After being cyberbullied and trying the possible best to prevent the act but the trolls keeps coming, what next? The Awareness program should also help to educate the society on the right authorities to report cyberbullying incidence to. They need to understand the point at which they need to approach these authorities and what should constitute their report. For example, if you are being harassed on Facebook, one can easily report the post as a spam and Facebook will remove such post and block the person from your profile. Also, they need to understand the effect of filing a false report and as such will need to have evidence to back-up their claims and a good way of doing this, is printing out the conversation records between you and the bully before it gets taken down. However, using awareness and education to put cyberbullying in check is a model of using a change in social norms to tackle a problem created by technology.
Cyberbullying is no more
an infant problem, as it has grown to the point where it is a thorn in the
flesh of the society and must be removed with the stiff hand of the Law. It’s
high time we started passing bills and laws to address this issue of
cyberbullying. We need to start seeing it as equivalent to crimes such as
assisted suicide and stalking amongst a few others. For instance, about 49
states in US have a bullying law but only 16 of these states actually cater for
cyberbullying and only 12 states have criminal sanctions attached to this issue
(Well, this is an improvement compared the status of cyberbullying prior to the
Megan Meier case). So, we can see that the law has not really being used when
it comes to addressing this issue. Cyberbullying needs to be properly catered
for in the law by using the school as a control point. Schools need to be given
the right or ability to sanction students who indulge in cyberbullying of
another student because the school is where majority of this events occur. Laws
needs to be passed that prohibit anyone from emotionally attacking individuals
with the use of internet or any technology device. However, in doing this, the
judiciary should thread with care because some people can use this as a weapon
against you. For instance, a girl and a guy who just broke up, depending on the
cause of their break-up, can choose to send mean messages to each other and
then one party decides to report as being cyberbullied. The authorities
shouldn’t just bounce on the other party, but I believe they should use the
“3-notice before takedown” model of addressing the cyber-squatting. With this
model, once a report has been made, the accused cyberbully is being warned or
instructed to stop contacting the other party but if he continues with the act,
he can then be taken-in as a cyberbully. Also the law can help check
cyberbullying by increasing the penalty of someone found guilty of committing
the crime. A five year jail term or expulsion from school being attached to
cyberbullying will drastically reduce its occurrence. Restrictions of certain
age bracket to social sites such as Facebook, Twitter and My Space amongst a
few can be used to put cyberbullying in check.
A number of hate sites or
pro-suicide sites are still in existence and they go a long way in contributing
to teaching these kids on how to be aggressive and even ways commit suicide.
Such sites should be taken down by passing laws that prohibits their existence
because having a website that portrays such information is as good as having a
TV station that teaches hate and how to commit suicide. The sword arm of the
law has been idle long enough doing nothing about this issue; it’s high time we
passed bills for the removal of such site and prosecution of its owners.
This is the part I find
fascinating the most, when you use the cause of the problem to solve the
problem. Advances in technology and
internet being the cause of the problem can be used to solve the same problem. In
using the internet as a means of providing solutions to the problem, we can
make the websites or channel of communication as a controlled point. A very
good example is in the recent upgrade on Facebook where you can properly report
incidence of what matters to you. All you need to do is report an item as spam
and follow a process which helps Facebook to identify the cause of your action
and know if they need to take further actions on the account. Also, just the
way spam mails can be filtered, there should be ways in which hate mails or
degrading mails can also be filtered. This can help a great deal because the
sender can choose to send whatever he wants but the message doesn’t get to the
receiver. Technology can also be used to prevent some certain registered user
from contacting another user i.e. you can easily block a person who you see as
a troll on profile. This prevents the person from being able to further contact
you, this can also be done on the cell phone by screening the calls you
get. However, the above suggestions do
not prevent users from creating a fake or dubious account profile because most
cyberbullies hide behind the screen of anonymity. But then if we push further
to ensure that account holders are really who they say they are, we will be
pushing our boundaries on privacy issues.
Really I’m not sure where
this next solution suggestion should fall under, if it should be under the
technological approach or the Law approach and that is suspension of the
bully’s ISP account. From my perspective of the situation I believe that is too
gross. Fine, I understand in tackling this problem, we have to go all out at it
and fight against it but depriving the bully of the internet is also bullying
in another form. But if the IM/social site account is taken down, I reasonably
think that’s fair enough. I’m sure you want to ask me, “What if he opens
another account and continue the act?”, then I think it’s justifiable to
take-down his/her ISP.
Still on the search for
solutions to cyberbullying, Ms. Parry suggested that if we all abide by the
online etiquette ‘Netiquette’, it’ll save us a whole lot of headache and this
netiquette include;
- Start
by making sure you are sending things to the right place, that it arrives
and that the right person gets it. (A mistake in one letter could be
deadly and have adverse effect so be sure to double-check)
- Is
it worth sending? Don’t waste peoples’ time or bandwidth with junk, chain
e-mails and false rumors.
- Proofread
and spell-check your e-mails and make sure they know who you are.
- Don’t
attack others online, say anything that could be considered insulting or
that is controversial. (This is usually where it all starts from).
- Don’t
forward other people’s e-mails without their permission or share their
personal information and if you have to, make sure it contains nothing
personal /offensive to anyone.
- Are
you angry when you are writing this message? If you are, just take a 5
minutes break to cool off.
- Don’t
reply to spam, even to ask to be removed from their mailing list.
- How private is the message you are sending? Are you willing to have others read this message or forward it to others without your permission?
Parents also have an important role to play in the fight against
cyberbullying because asides the child being involved they are the most
affected by the effect of cyberbullying. So, the parents themselves have to be
actively involved in the activities of wards both on campus and off campus,
both online and offline. The parent should be watchful of the sites they let
them visit, monitor the activities of this children online and once they notice
any irrational behavior from the child, they should seek to know what’s happening
with the ward and request for help if necessary. Parental control on Windows
for example can be used to limit the access of their wards online. Also, parents
should make their wards understand that the virtual world should remain online
and they should never make any meeting arrangement with someone they met
online.
In conclusion, I’ll say in other to address this issue properly
we must understand that most kids that get involved in cyberbullying have
various motives for the action and these reasons must be put into consideration
before judging them. Most, kids get involved in form of defense for themselves
and they bully because they have been bullied. This will really go a long way
in helping us determine our course of action.
