A rallying cry against cyberbullying

Lawmakers and Internet executives are perking up to the growing problem of kid bully fights on the Web.

Legislators are newly arming themselves with laws that will protect kids from being repeatedly harassed via the Internet, text messages, or other electronic devices. In recent weeks, Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R-Mo.) proposed a federal law that would criminalize acts of so-called cyberbullying (PDF). And Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt was scheduled Friday to sign into state law a similar measure, but the event was postponed because of inclement weather in St. Louis.

Both state and federal laws were prompted by the suicide of Missouri 13-year-old Megan Meier, who was the victim of repeated harassment on MySpace.com. An adult neighbor was indicted in the case last month by a grand jury in Los Angeles not on charges of cyberbullying, but on charges of unauthorized access of a computer system with intent to harm another person. (Missouri litigators said they didn't have a law to prosecute the case at the time.)

The case has raised national awareness around the issue of cyberbullying.

"When you see adults preying on kids, we're learning how significant the risks are," said Parry Aftab, an attorney and founder of the nonprofit advocacy group Wired Safety.

Parents, teens, teachers, and Internet executives also came together this week to hash out issues of digital fights at Wired Safety's International Stop Cyberbullying Conference, a two-day gathering in White Plains, N.Y., and New York City. Executives from Facebook, Verizon, MySpace, Microsoft, and many others talked with hundreds of teens and parents about how to better protect kids online from harassment.

In general, the conversation among these groups is moving from a focus solely on sexual predators to the everyday harm that kids can inflict on each other in chat rooms, social networks, virtual worlds, or via text message. Researchers say that anywhere from 40 percent to 85 percent of kids have been exposed to some kind of digital bullying, whether it's a stolen password or being called "fat" via instant message.

Even in adult-monitored virtual worlds for kids, children have been known to get around dictionary controls by naming a virtual room after a peer that he or she wants to ridicule, e.g., "Mary is fat." And while calling someone "fat" is not a crime, parents and legislators are trying to prevent the behavior before it leads to tragedies like Meier's.

"It used to be that adults would pooh-pooh bullying as a phase, but we're seeing increasing violent actions resulting from it," Sanchez said in an interview.

"The problem with cyberbullying is that kids aren't even safe in their own home, because they're being harassed through the computer or cell phones 24/7 potentially," she said.

Lawmakers are seeking to address cyberbullying with new legislation because there's currently no specific law on the books that deals with it. A fairly new federal cyberstalking law might address such acts, according to Aftab, but no one has been prosecuted under it yet. The proposed federal law would make it illegal to use electronic means to "coerce, intimidate, harass or cause other substantial emotional distress."

When signed, the Missouri state law will update existing regulations on harassment and stalking to include instances of those acts over the Internet, text message, or other electronic device. It will make cyberbullying punishable by up to four years in jail.

Stopping harassment
This week at an Internet conference, Scott Arpajan, founder of kids' virtual world Dizzywood, backed up this notion. He said that more than sexual predators, the company needs to watch out for cyberbullying in its growing community of 8 to 14 year olds. Dizzywood hires outside moderators to keep an eye on interactions among children.

"The biggest thing is keeping kids from getting in fights," Arpajan said.

Middle-school kids and teens said this week that they want more technology and response from adults and Internet companies when it comes to these issues, according to Aftab. At the conference, which hosted as many as 200 teens, kids said they want to be able to report instances of cyberbullying online and not have them "go into a black hole." Teens also said that they want Web sites to write easy-to-understand terms of service and privacy policies. That could mean creating policies that are animated or graphical.

To the consumer electronics industry: The teens also said they want new and better tools to stop harassment on cell phones. That would include buddy lists that block anyone besides approved senders from reaching their text message in-box.

As for the industry, more groups are creating Internet safety programs for K-12 kids that address bullying. Microsoft, for example, is sponsoring the Anti-Defamation League's program to train teachers, students, and parents on how to stop cyberbullying. Google also recently sponsored an Internet safety guide from Common Sense Media.

Sites like MyYearBook and Facebook have hosted pages that call on teens to pledge against cyberfighting, in honor of Meier. Wired Safety's group of teen Internet safety volunteers put a page on MyYearBook and there's a similar page on Facebook.

Tina Meier, the mother of Megan, said that change has to start with the kids, but parents need to talk more to their children. "The biggest thing I tell parents is to communicate and know what's going on with their child. They have to know what apps they're using and be on those sites," Meier said.

[MaLvaDo39]

Overall, we should be going to the gov't to help us in everything.
Learn to be self sufficient and shrink the gov't down and out of our lives.

[Cannibizzle]

This is correct. Furthermore, this American hypersensitivity to things that should be remedied by parents taking responsibility has got to end.

[roachrt]

This is ridiculous. I agree that Megan Meier's situation was extremely unfortunate, but I don't think that the solution is to bring government into our daily lives to monitor how we speak to each other. Although freedom of speech protects our right to speak out against injustices in our society, it unfortunately must protect unpopular speech too. You can't have the government censor hurtful speech. I'm not saying that it should be allowed though. I'm just saying that the government should not be the ones to monitor and prosecute something like that. This is an issue for the websites where this goes on and for the parents of the children. The parents should be involved in raising their children with a little thicker skin to realize that people insult and offend other people. You can't homogenize the entire society to get rid of anything offensive because then you just have a hugely inefficient government entity that makes the determinations for us on what is morally right and wrong. What good is that?

Has anyone ever seen the movie Escape from LA where the new Moral America has gone so far to the right that anything offensive or bad for you now results in deportation? Of course this is a gross exaggeration, but my point is that the government should not get involved in everything. It's bad for society to hand over all of our freedoms to someone else rather than taking responsibility for raising our own children with self-confidence and strong wills.

[roachrt]

This is ridiculous. I agree that Megan Meier's situation was extremely unfortunate, but I don't think that the solution is to bring government into our daily lives to monitor how we speak to each other. Although freedom of speech protects our right to speak out against injustices in our society, it unfortunately must protect unpopular speech too. You can't have the government censor hurtful speech. I'm not saying that it should be allowed though. I'm just saying that the government should not be the ones to monitor and prosecute something like that. This is an issue for the websites where this goes on and for the parents of the children. The parents should be involved in raising their children with a little thicker skin to realize that people insult and offend other people. You can't homogenize the entire society to get rid of anything offensive because then you just have a hugely inefficient government entity that makes the determinations for us on what is morally right and wrong. What good is that?

Has anyone ever seen the movie Escape from LA where the new Moral America has gone so far to the right that anything offensive or bad for you now results in deportation? Of course this is a gross exaggeration, but my point is that the government should not get involved in everything. It's bad for society to hand over all of our freedoms to someone else rather than taking responsibility for raising our own children with self-confidence and strong wills.

[Lerianis]

The unfortunate thing there is that when you do that (raise children with self-confidence and strong wills) some ******** out there go off and say that they are 'getting too big for their britches'. I heard that a LOT when I was growing up, and my parents got on the case of the adults who said that about my behavior, which was basically nothing more than not doing something that an adult told me to do if I damn well didn't want to do it.

I wasn't 'destroying property', I wasn't forcibly raping people, etc. In fact, I was BETTER BEHAVED and still are better behaved than most other people on this planet.

[R.Jefferson]

So who cares if some punk kid talks smack about you.

If parents are doing thier job and the kids are balanced and well adjusted, the parents just need to say ignore the fools, they will be janitors and stoop sitters when they garduate while the world is yours.

[Lerianis]

Actually, that isn't the case. Most of the people who 'talk smack' are the people who get the high paying jobs, have good careers, etc.
You ever heard what they call a meek person in a management position? Mr. Pushover.

[Lerianis]

You cannot preemptively protect children from any kind of bullying. The only thing that you can do is step in AFTER the bullying starts, and make it VERY clear to said bully that their behavior is not acceptable.

Let's face facts: being bullied, being insulted, etc. helps a normal person to grow and to become 'thicker skinned', meaning they learn how to disregard putdowns by other people.

[Jim Landers]

Our legislators - state or federal - think they can legislate everything....except REALLY IMPORTANT PROBLEMS like social security, medicare, medicaid, the national debt, totally ineffective regulatory agencies, etc., etc.. They don't want to touch tough problems like these with a 10 foot pole, so they dither their time away investigating superficial things like sports figures and awarding honorable discharges 60 years after the fact. Not to suggest that internet harrassment is trivial, but if these kids parents were on duty, they wouldn't allow them to be on the internet or they would deal with the nitwits creating the problem. America used to be a free country until the thought police took it over.

[Jonnygthedrummer]

im very sorry about the boy... but really , just delete someone like that , or block them from ur phone myspace, IM, or watever it is.. i dont think we need laws for this, just delete someone if they are bothering u

[humanssssss]

Part of growing up is to learn there are good and bad. What's good for you may not be good for another person. This is the nature of being. Letting the government determine what's good and what is bad, is bad because it is a monpolistic entity that will drive the entire country to fascism. A scary precedent when the government thinks a group of people is bad for society. I believe this happened before. We cannot let our freedom of speech be handed to the government because then we will enslave ourselves and they will use this power to go after a group of people they don't like, and if history is any lesson to us, they will kill, burn, and torture these voices.

Parents and teachers are to be educated about cyberbulling and figure out effective ways for kids to defend and protect them. Though, most of the problem I see with cyberbulling today is not the aggressor but the victim who ACTUALLY wants to read the email or message. The fact that the victim continues to engage himself/herself in the actual detriment of the information is the victim's own fault. The best way to teach kids is to be strong, ignore the fckers that threaten your survival and ego. Empower kids to be freedom thinker.

[professionaladventurer]

Remember when the first iPhone was about to launch? Everyone with a blog (save one or two) was like 'That's the dumbest phone ever" or "what kind of idiot would buy that phone" Now everyone and their mum (who has a blog too) is like;" Wow, how much more cool will the next iPhone be" or "It's going ot be sooooooo cool, I bet it has 2 screens, 2 cameras and can control my iCoffee maker." Do get me wrong, I have one and some day mine will break and I'll replace it, but 2.0 is a progression from 1.0 AND not a ground breaking event.

[georgiarat]

Personally I believe it should go to such sites as the Kos and Huffington Post. They should be shut down over such conduct.

[Hobyx]

I don't think this a situation where Law can do much or any good. Laws like these are too vague, not terribly necessary, and are FAR too open for abuse.

[Travis Ernst]

Going back to the article, what in tarnation are parents doing letting their kids go online in grades 1-4. They should not even BE online at that age for safety reasons without parents hovering over their backs and needing to enter the passwords.

The problem with the younger ages is back at the home with the parents. We don't need a law for this. It may be thrown out (freedom of press) due to constitutional grounds if it gains any momentum. With the kids in school the educational institutes FAIL to prevent bullying in the building with students be it physical or verbal attacks. Now you want to go to the online realm where it is harder to track who was on the other end of the keyboard?

Start enforcing IRL infractions first. THEN you can deal with the online policies and the services that host peer to peer sites you will have to push to enforce "code of conduct" policies.

[johnsra]

The point most of you are missing here is WHY this law was even started. The part you're ignoring, and what this law was initially intended to do, was to prevent an ADULT from harassing a CHILD. I'm not saying that's what the law looked like at the end after everyone had their hands in it.

In this case it was the MOTHER of another child who was harassing this one who killed herself. The parent (who should be shot dead for this) impersonated a boy online that was in love with this little girl. This went on for MONTHS on end. She then promptly told the little girl, you're fat ugly and worthless, no one will ever love you, you should go kill yourself. And the child did. There must be some responsibility on the part of the adult in this situation who intentionally destroyed this little girl?s emotional state. Say what you will, but unless you have teenage or pre-teen daughters, you really don?t know what kind of emotional messes they can be.
Children are cruel enough to each other without a parent involving themselves in this way.

P.S. I live in the area where this happened, it was covered extensively on the local news and this little blurb about it does not tell everything.

[The_Decider]

The girls parents are at least as guilty as the harraser. She could have easily blocked the harasser. What the adult did was inexcusable, but there is plenty of blame to go around and this law will do nothing to stop it from happening again. It is merely an excuse to clamp down on free expression of the kind the government fears. It has nothing to do with "protecting the children".

This kid was a tragedy looking for an excuse. With absentee parents, it was only a matter of time.

[DragonWizard]

Exploit a problem and blow it up to huge proportions......make up a "cure" that will steer laws toward the goal that "YOU" want ( one that has nothing to do with the original problem.. accomplish this goal using fear and do something that was your goal all along and had NOTHING to do with the originally stated problem... if they can wedge their way into being able to monitor the internet with said problem as the excuse who is to say that they won't monitor for other stuff while they supposedly are doing the job they profess.. DO NOT ALLOW BIG BROTHER TO MONITOR EVERY PART OF YOUR LIFE OR YOU WILL BE SORRY !!! What exactly will they do with all of the peripheral information they ALSO gather...

[OokiiMamoru]

This only works if fake accounts are not created to continue harassment, and the intended victim should not be forced off the web as a solution. Just add continues cyber bulling as a legitment stalking clause and be done with it.

[The_Decider]

The girls parents are at least as guilty as the harraser. She could have easily blocked the harasser. It is impossible to be harassed, scammed, etc on the Internet without the express permission of the "victim". What the adult did was inexcusable, but there is plenty of blame to go around.

This law will do nothing to stop it from happening again. It is merely an excuse to clamp down on free expression of the kind the government fears. It has nothing to do with "protecting the children".

This kid was a tragedy looking for an excuse. With absentee parents and a maladjusted kid, it was only a matter of time.

[Funkme1ster]

If the US government wants to attempt a foolishly convoluted system to keep its populace in check, here's a much better one I've been preaching for the last 8 years:

Impose a physical pe-and-paper registration system and keep anyone under 18 off the internet. Not for legal purposes, or for the sake of "protecting our children", but because it's for the good of everyone.

To the rest of society, teenagers contribute nothing, spend mindless hours on myspace and facebook "socializing", and ultimately sully userspace on forums with insipid and irrelevant postings. Furthermore, the current generation has no idea what it means to grow up without the internet. Their reliance on the internet has dulled their senses and made them less competent and inventive than prior generations. High schools are even having to address the problem of students citing Wikipedia as an "academic source".

Granted, there are adults that are just as ill-mannered and teenagers that are police and intelligent, but if we let exceptions dictate the rules, then we're back where we started.

In the end, teenagers need to learn to think on their own and live without "online socializing" (if you can call it socializing), and the adult population deserves the right to an internet free from 15 year olds proclaiming the benefits of anarchy and why "the man" is putting them down, how proud they are they stole a bottle of whiskey form their dad's liquor cabinet, or why a certain company is "so totally gay because they suck".

[rugisis1]

Dubmess comments i have read in a while.

[Paedil]

Just what we needed: A "play nice" rule for the internet.
For the sake of example, assume someone I've never seen points out on a message board (Or instant messenger...or myspace/facebook/whatever.) the sky is flourescent orange and they have a talking dog.
I ever so politely ask if they were dropped on their head.
If I then find out the person is a minor, could I be criminally charged?
Well, if I said something like that to them twice, I'd satisfy repeated. Severe and hostile are pretty ambiguous terms. "Shut up" could be considered severe and hostile.
Any insult could, and I'm betting profanity definitely will.
They may as well have worded the law "Don't be mean or you'll go to jail." and broken for lunch.

I don't have too much of an issue with the stalking part of the law, it's the "Don't be mean to people!" part that I object to.

So it's basically an example of politicians turning a halfway decent idea into a thundering storm of stupid.
I can't say I'm terribly surprised.

[NavyDad]

There is a cure for cyber bullying and pedifilia and anything else bad that can happen to children on the internet, but most parents and definatley children will not agree. I am a father of four and my kids dont have social internet problems. They are not cyberbullied nor will they ever be targeted by a pedifile. I dont let my kids on the internet. I was 25 years old before I had my first email address. I dont see the benefit of letting my kids on the internet. Its just one more thing to distract them from there school work. Dont wonder why kids from less developed countries become great doctors. They dont have any distractions while there going to school ie: computers TV , video games, DVD players, VHS players, mp3's, ipod's, and cell phones. All this crap takes the attention off of what matters, education. My kids may be concidered sheltered or maybe even deprived a little but they arent getting cyber bullied or anything like that. The internet isnt for children its for adults.

[ah79]

I am an adult who has been harassed, threatened and been called vile names on a web site. It's NOT just children that need protection. I can tell you this from experience. I have been researching the web for laws that would protect ME and found only laws to protect children, which is wonderful. What about adults who are threatened? No, I'm not looking for Big Brother to be looking over our shoulder, but if I were threatened in person, I would have the recourse of going to the police. It is a very emotional, frightening experience even for an adult. If you haven't been through it, you can't imagine what it is like.