Blog

Evidently, the waters of cyberbullying case law are still murky.  Due to variability in opinions and perspectives across jurisdictions and adjudicators, clear precedent is still sometimes elusive.  Consider the following case from late 2009 from a California District Court (08-cv-03824, J.C. v. Beverly Hills Unified School District), in which an eighth-grader was cyberbullied through the posting of a YouTube video created by peers denigrating her as “spoiled,” “a brat,” and a “slut.”  The target tearfully reported this to her counselor, and indicated strongly that she was upset, humiliated, and did not feel able to go to class and focus on school.  The counselor discussed the matter with administration as well as with school district attorneys, classified the behavior as “cyberbullying,” and the offending girl who posted the video online was suspended for two days.  Her family decided to sue, and took the case to federal court on the grounds that her First Amendment right to free speech had been violated.

Even though extant case law seems to support corrective action if a target is unable to feel safe and supported to learn without distractions of harassment within a school environment, the federal judge in this case ruled that school authorities overstepped their bounds.  This decision was based on the fact that the school could not prove that the offending speech and actions caused a “substantial disruption” of school activities or goals.  Moreover, the ruling judge stated that “the court cannot uphold school discipline of student speech simply because young persons are unpredictable or immature, or because, in general, teenagers are emotionally fragile and may often fight over hurtful comments.”

This is particularly disconcerting to me.  The judge completely disregarded the emotional and psychological well-being of the target in this case, even though any adult who serves youth or works for the best interests of youth is taught that they must not view the internalization of harm in a critical manner, but must empathize with it.  That is, adults must not discount the reality of pain experienced by adolescents through their experiences with bullying or cyberbullying, because this casts blame on the victims themselves.  This small-minded mentality is, in part, why we have teenagers who kill themselves – because they feel that their viewpoint is not appreciated but rather trivialized and discarded.

Demonstration of “substantial [schoolwide] disruption” is a sufficient clause to uphold school discipline of cyberbullying behaviors that are initiated off campus.  However, it is not a necessary clause because there are other aggravating factors that impel student disciplinary sanction by schools.  One primary factor is the harm personally and subjectively experienced by victimized youth.  Without question, the ability of the victim in this case to learn in a safe and secure environment at school was substantially disrupted.  But apparently that wasn’t enough.

In essence, the judge asserts that the adolescent victim in this case – and others like her – should have tougher skin, and should not allow hurtful comments to bother her so much.  He summarily dismisses the gravity of her pain in one fell swoop, and bases his decision on an impersonal aspect of the case, rather than the very real, very visceral effect that cyberbullying had on a young girl.

Finally, the victim in this case is being denied the benefits of, and is subjected to discrimination under, a federally-funded educational program (the public school), which undermines her civil rights.  As such, I would not at all be surprised  if this case goes to the appellate level and is overturned.  In fact, I am hopeful that it will be.

A colleague sent me this article detailing how videos of bullying and other forms of violence posted online – student on student, or student on teacher – can actually be used as a “teachable tool” and to “wake everyone up.”  Parents can sit down with youth and watch them together, and convey lessons about appropriate and inappropriate ways to deal with conflict.

I actually don’t agree with this.  A recent discussion among other colleagues has focused on whether video content that ostensibly shocks the conscience can be used to teach adolescents about wrong and right behaviors.  Research and anecdotal accounts have shown, though, that images and video of drunk driving crashes are not viewed in a serious, grave light – but are rather casually dismissed as commonplace or irrelevant since youth tend to be desensitized to violence due to television, movies, and the Internet.

I think that since youth see physical fights often (as compared to adults) – either on school campuses or in the neighborhood – that seeing them captured in video and posted online will not really strike a proverbial chord in their minds.  Kids look up these kinds of videos on YouTube for entertainment.  It won’t surprise them.  It won’t deter them.  It won’t all of the sudden convince them that punches and kicks are completely unacceptable ways to resolve conflict.

For those of you who are regular visitors to the site, you may have noticed some changes over the last week or so.  Sameer and I have been working hard to add and update information on the site to make it even more useful for you all.  For example, we’ve added a few videos to our new YouTube channel and have begun posting updates through our Twitter Feed.  The biggest change you will notice is that we are now the “Cyberbullying Research Center.”  We have been working on this project for quite a while now, and believe this will allow us to do more of the research we feel is critical to better understanding this important problem.

We will continue to roll out more features and resources over the next couple of months, so definitely stop by often.  We are poring over new data from two school districts and hope to have summary fact sheets up soon.  I can tell you that initial results suggest that recent prevalence rates appear to be similar to our earlier work (about 8-9% of students have experienced cyberbullying in the previous 30 days), though the environments in which cyberbullying is occurring is changing (more on social networking sites and YouTube).  Follow us on Twitter for more snippets of findings as we work our way through the data, and check out our new video clips on YouTube.

This story, which involves a digitally-recorded video of three teens throwing a 32-ounce soda on a girl working the window at a Taco Bell drive-thru, is a newer iteration of cyberbullying which we’re seeing more often. The boys posted the video on YouTube, which led to repeated embarrassment and humiliation for the girl. She was bold and savvy enough to discover the identity of the boys and report them to law enforcement – which deserves commendation. I only wish that the punishment handed down by the judge was better conceived. I think that shaming in general can be highly-effective when dealing with real-world wrongdoing simply because we care a great deal about our social standing and the way that we’re perceived by others. I just don’t know if shaming is an effective sanction when dealing with online harassment because the culture as a whole hasn’t collectively shunned and denounced the act (like the real-world offenses of child abuse and rape have been denounced). There is not really any negative stigma associated with cyberbullying in our society, and so shaming is not the best punitive option.

So…I’m sure by now you all have heard the news story and seen the attendant video of the cheerleader in Lakeland, Florida who was lured into a “friend’s” home and then severely beaten by that friend and other cheerleaders. All of this for basically talking smack over MySpace (cyberbullying?) about those friends. So what we have is a vivid depiction of six girls who carefully coordinated (with two male lookouts and everything) a vicious attack (to where she suffered a concussion and fell unconscious) on an unsuspecting girl at a home where no parents were around…and where she was detained with no freedom to leave…and where the violence was recorded for the purposes of uploading it to YouTube and MySpace…. Then she was taken in a car, dropped off at some random location, and threatened with more beatings if she went to the authorities.
Points to consider:
1. What is the deal with these girls being so horrifically violent? Is this not out of the ordinary, but seems so because the recording has so starkly shown us the hostility and aggression of which some girls are capable? Is it possible that girls are actually *just as prone to violence* as boys (not withstanding testosterone and so forth) but have been constrained by social acceptability…but perhaps those standards are eroding or fading or being diluted as the years go by?
2. Is our culture being desensitized to female violence? For example, you turn on The Real World on MTV and we are seeing more frequently verbal violence and even physical violence among girls.
3. Were the girls playing to the camera…performing, if you will? Were they, to some degree, looking for their 15 minutes of fame by recording themselves in this video?
4. What were the girls thinking, in terms of escaping identification, apprehension, and punishment, with the recording of the criminal assault?
5. Are the parents at fault?
6. Has anyone seen the MySpace postings, as I’d like to consider their contents?
7. Has anyone figured out how to download flash video, because I’d like to archive those videos linked from that site to show others?

Article and unedited video here.