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We have received numerous requests from high school students and teachers over the last several weeks for information about whether or not there should be a criminal law to cover cyberbullying. It seems that this is a national high school debate topic this year. Since we have discussed this issue quite a bit on this blog, I wanted to point interested readers (and debaters) to information that might help them determine for themselves a position on this question. First, I encourage anyone interested in this topic to review the following blogs posted by us over the last couple of years:

Most Cyberbullying Cases Aren’t Criminal (10-12-2010)

Cyberbullying Laws and School Policy: A Blessing or Curse? (9-28-2010)

The Current State of Cyberbullying Laws (8-3-2010)

Do We Need Cyberbullying Legislation? (9-6-2009)

Cyberbullying Legislation: Clarification of My Position and Invitation to Participate (5-19-2009)

Cyberbullying Legislation (5-7-2009)

Second, we also have a few fact sheets that could provide valuable information, including the following:

Cyberbullying Fact Sheet: Identification, Prevention, and Response (a good primer on the issues)

Cyberbullying Fact Sheet: A Brief Review of Relevant Legal and Policy Issues

State Cyberbullying Laws: A Brief Review of State Cyberbullying Laws and Policies

Take some time to explore the many other resources on our site (and others), to develop an informed perspective about cyberbullying and appropriate responses. Research-based legislation is just one prong of a multi-pronged approach. And in our view a criminal sanction should be reserved for only the most serious of cases.  As we point out in the resources above, many states already have existing statutes on the books that would apply to the most egregious forms of electronic harassment. So do we need a new law?  That is the question.

Best of luck with the debate – I am sure a lot of valuable information will come from this important dialog.

We get a lot of emails, phone calls, and comments on this blog from adults who are being bullied though technology.  They stress to us that cyberbullying is not just an adolescent problem.  Believe me, we know.  We receive more inquiries from adults than teens.  We know that cyberbullying negatively affects adults too.  It’s just that we spend the majority of our efforts studying how this problem impacts school-aged youth due to their tenuous developmental stage.  That said, I thought I would take some time here to give the adults who have been victimized out there some general advice.

First, it is important to keep all evidence of the bullying: messages, posts, comments, etc.  If there are ways you can determine who exactly is making the comments, also document that.  Second, contact the service or content provider through which the bullying is occurring.  For example, if you are being cyberbullied on Facebook, contact them.  If you are receiving hurtful or threatening cell phone messages, contact your cell phone company to obtain assistance.  Along those same lines, familiarize yourself with the Terms of Use for the various sites you frequent, and the online accounts you sign up for.  Many web sites expressly prohibit harassment and if you report it through their established mechanisms, the content and/or bully should be removed from the site in a timely manner.  To be sure, some web site administrators are better and quicker at this than others.

Also, please be careful not to retaliate – or do anything that might be perceived by an outsider to have contributed to the problem.  Do not respond to the cyberbully except to calmly tell them to stop.  If they refuse, you may have to take additional actions.  If you are ever afraid for your safety, you need to contact law enforcement to investigate.  They can determine whether any threats made are credible.  If they are, the police will formally look into it.  The evidence that you have collected will help them to evaluate your situation.

You should also take the time to check your state laws.  We have discussed some of these laws on this blog and have a summary of many applicable laws here.  In Wisconsin, for example, it is a misdemeanor if someone uses computerized communication systems to “frighten, intimidate, threaten, abuse, or harass another person.”  It is also against the law to “harass annoy, or offend another person.”  See what the laws in your state are to determine if the police should get involved.

If the threats or comments are detrimental to your health, safety, or occupation, you might want to consult with an attorney who specializes in harassment, defamation of character, false light, intentional infliction of emotional distress, or similar types of civil action.  A letter sent from an attorney (on law firm letterhead) to the bully may be all that is necessary to get the bullying to stop.  The problem with this approach is that it can be costly.  I have spoken to some victims who have consulted with attorneys who want a significant sum of money to get involved, even at a basic level.  I can only imagine how frustrating this is after experiencing emotional and psychological suffering – and then realizing that you can’t afford to get legal help.  Another problem associated with pursuing a bully through civil action is that, even if you are successful and a judge or jury rules in your favor, it can be difficult to determine an appropriate damage amount.  I served as an expert witness in a cyberbullying case in the summer of 2008.  In that case, the adult victims were being bullied in an AOL chat room.  Everyone agreed that what the bully was doing was wrong, but to what were the victims entitled?  They had some modest medical bills and could be reimbursed for costs associated with their AOL account – but these losses added up to less than $1,000.  And while I don’t know the actual amount, I am sure their legal bills were in the tens of thousands of dollars.  They ended up settling for a very small amount – just to make a statement to the bully.  Most of us can’t afford to take those actions on principle alone.

In sum, it can be difficult to hold bullies accountable for their actions (for both adolescents and adults).  In a country such as ours that values free speech so highly, many people genuinely believe they can say whatever they want, to whomever they want.  We know that is not true, but it isn’t clear where exactly the line is.  And just because we *can* say certain things, doesn’t mean we should.  It’s no wonder that many teens are wrestling with this problem—they see the adults in their lives saying mean and nasty things to others on a regular basis.  Do your part to model appropriate behavior and address any hurtful language when it comes up.  The kids (and other adults) in your life will hopefully see it, remember it, and act in the right ways.

Justin and I have just written a new fact sheet on Sexting, based on requests that we have received and feedback from previous blog posts. It first provides a definition we’ve crafted, and describes the phenomenon for the layreader. Then, we discuss two major cases that made national attention before reviewing the current state of research. Here, we have shared new numbers from our most recent (Spring 2010) data collection endeavor, and have broken participation down by age and gender. If you’re interested in other distributions, please let us know and we can run the analysis for you. By the way, we’ll further flesh out our sexting data in a forthcoming manuscript.

After summarizing existing studies on the problem, we detail informal and formal responses – particularly from legal and political authorities – and describe what schools can do as it relates to policy and response efforts. Finally, the fact sheet suggests some practical prevention strategies that educators can implement to reduce the occurrence and perceived acceptability of sexting among students. To note, we’ve previously discussed the role of multidisciplinary response teams here.  Definitely let us know your thoughts about this new fact sheet – we are really interested in hearing them!

Back in March I wrote about this case, where a federal jury had ordered the Hudson Area School District in Michigan to pay $800,000 in damages to a student who was repeatedly harassed by classmates (and allegedly staff) for a period of several years.  A federal district court had been reviewing the facts of the case and recently overturned the jury’s order, stating that the harassment the student experienced was not sexual in nature and therefore not subject to a Title IX claim.  This despite being called a “queer” and “faggot” on a regular basis and his locker being “covered with shaving cream spelling out sexually oriented words.”  The court also asserted that the plaintiff failed to prove that the school was deliberately indifferent to the harassment that had been taking place.

There are a couple of important lessons that can be learned from this case.  First, holding incompetent school officials accountable for their actions, or lack thereof, can be very difficult.  To be fair, we were not present during the hearings and do not have access to all of the evidence presented.  From court records, however, it seemed clear to me that school officials were ignorant at best and most likely indifferent.  Obviously Federal Circuit Judge Lawrence Zatkoff didn’t agree with me.  Please read the facts of the case here and assess for yourself.

Second, it is important that students who are bullied keep very detailed records about what happened, what they did in response, who they told, and what that person did to fix the problem.  Targets of bullying also may need to fully exhaust all school-level mechanisms for responding to the bullying.  They need to give the school a chance to make things right.  School officials too need to keep very good records pertaining to bullying incidents so that they can articulate the steps that were taken to demonstrate, as apparently the Hudson Area School District did, that they took appropriate actions to remedy the problem.

School officials cannot become complacent and assume that there is zero liability if they ignore bullying that affects their learning environment and interferes with the rights of students to feel safe at school. Our colleague Nancy Willard pointed us to a couple of examples: In Vance v. Spencer County Public School District (2000), a jury ordered the school to pay the target of student-on-student sexual harassment $220,000.  In a similar case (Theno v. Tonganoxi Unified School District, 2005), another jury ordered the school district to pay the target $250,000 for being deliberately indifferent to, once again, student-on-student sexual harassment occurring at school.  Both of these cases involved sexual harassment that occurred at school and both involved jury orders.  Common citizens could clearly see that the schools in these cases were irresponsible, indifferent, and should have done more to protect students.  Interestingly, the facts of the Theno case are very similar to the Patterson case, especially with respect to the names that the target was being called.

If we have learned anything from all of these cases, it is that this is a legal area that is far from clear.  What do you think?  Were staff members at the Hudson Area School District indifferent to the harassment?

It is imperative that everyone who works with youth, but especially law enforcement officers, stay up-to-date on the ever-evolving state and local laws concerning online behaviors, and equip themselves with the skills and knowledge to intervene as necessary. In recent survey of approximately 500 school resource officers from around the United States, we found that almost one-quarter of respondents did not know if their state had a cyberbullying law. This is surprising since their most visible responsibility involves responding to actions which are in violation of law (e.g., harassment, threats, stalking).

A couple of weeks ago, we posted a brief summary of the state laws concerning bullying and cyberbullying. At last count, 44 states had laws regarding bullying, and 30 of those included some mention of electronic forms of harassment. Almost all of these laws simply direct school districts to have a bullying and harassment policy, though few delineate the actual content of such policies. Please review this document and let us know if anything is inaccurate as we want to try to keep it as up-to-date as possible.

Some states, like Wisconsin, have both a bullying law (which recently passed) and separate statutes regulating telephones and other forms of electronic communication. Specifically, in Wisconsin it is a misdemeanor crime to threaten to “inflict injury or personal harm” through the use of e-mail or another computerized communication system. It is also illegal to harass, annoy, or otherwise offend another person electronically. Each state is different with respect to the extent that they specifically address electronic forms of harassment. Educators, parents, and  law enforcement officers need to be sure to carefully review and understand the statutes in their own state to understand the formal legal implications of participating in cyberbullying.