Within Australia, cyberbullying has emerged as a prevalent and pervasive social issue that the law has had to respond to. Various legal mechanisms have been utilised to attempt to regulate cyberbullying and its effects, such as legislation, police enforcement, and the court. In the following extended response, cyberbullying will be defined as a legal issue, and legal mechanisms will be outlined in how effective they work to achieve regulation towards the frequent problem. Cyberbullying will also be established in how it is truly regulated and enforced. As a legal issue, cyberbullying involves the repeated use of digital technology to harass, intimidate, or harm individuals. It associates behaviours such as threats, defamation and invasion …show more content…
An example of a law reform aimed at addressing cyberbullying and linked to police enforcement is the Criminal Code Amendment (Protecting Minors Online) Act 2021, which introduced new provisions to reinforce the legal framework for tackling online harassment and protecting minors from cyberbullying. Essentially, under this reform, the law imposed stricter penalties for individuals found guilty of cyberbullying, which is successfully designed to create a powerful message that online harassment is intolerable. Statistically, in 2021, 44% of young Australians reported cyberbullying, a 19% decrease from 2020 (According to eSafety Commissioner Report). Although the number is still big, it has been proven that cyberbullying cases have decreased, making the Criminal Code Amendment (Protecting Minors Online) Act 2021 successful to a moderate extent. Another essential law reform that has been recently established in Australia, is the Criminal Code Amendment (Bullying) Act 2018, which introduced the offence of ‘using an electronic device to menace, harass, or threaten’ as a crime. This act was a significant step toward acknowledging the harmful impact cyberbullying can have on individuals, especially psychologically and …show more content…
Specifically, within the ‘Olivia Melville Case’ and ‘Charlotte Dawson Case’, work to an intermediate level of indicating the harshness of cyberbullying. The strengths of these cases include increased awareness and public discourse, whereas the limitations encompass ongoing harassment and victim blaming. Hence, these strengths and challenges synergise to achieve large social media attention and improved legislation, but do not effectively resolve the issue and can cause post-traumatic
Cyberbullying is generally geared towards the younger generation of the youth, however, there has been cases where adults have been victims as well. In 2008 there was a case of cyberbullying that was carried out by a Missouri mom Lori Drew where she concentrated a public spotlight on the damage and abuse that speech in social media can cause to children and even convinced the advancement of a new legal idea on how to approach to understand that harm and to deal with the harm. The 49 year old Lori Drew created a MySpace account by the name of “Josh Evans,” (Steinhauser, 2008, para. 8-11) who was a teenage boy. The purpose of the creation for this account was to begin a dialogue with her very own 13 year old daughter’s former friend Megan Meier.
Introduction Historical records demonstrate that bullying is not a new phenomenon and continues to be a contemporary problem affecting many individuals daily. The twenty-first century saw the rapid rise of technology, internet access, and usage on social media platforms, introducing a new era of communication and interaction within a digital space. Unfortunately, the misuse of technology has created a new form of bullying, referred to as cyberbullying. “Bullying” is traditionally regarded as a deliberate and repeated act of aggressive behaviour in a physical space, with a power imbalance between the victim and the bully. On the other hand, “Cyberbullying” adheres to the exact definition but generally with the use of the internet and other digital
There were many ill effects predicted, and some of them became true, including the introduction of a new form of bullying known as cyberbullying. The following is the definition of cyberbullying according to Gale, Cengage Learning, “Cyberbullying is a form of interpersonal harassment that is conducted electronically. This electronic harassment can be carried out in many ways, using a variety of mediums. Abusive messages can be sent to a victim through text messages, instant messages, or e-mail. Cyberbullies can also attack their victims through postings on Facebook, Twitter, or other social networking websites.
Someone might argue that if people do nothing against cyberbullying then it might lead to physical violence and that shouldn’t happen. In source 3 it states “ the lack of immediate emotional feedback in cyberbullying allows aggressors to often continue the hurtful behavior unchecked.” This tells us that cyberbullying happens and often continues because they don’t have emotional feedback from being there and unlike cyberbullying people “immediately see the hurt they have caused to the target” which most people wouldn’t do. What should happen is cyberbullying prevention in schools to deter people from and warn others of the effects of cyberbullying. In source 1 it states “And bypassing the Prevention Act, we’re deterring people from engaging in cyberbullying by showing such behavior punishable by crime that won't be tolerated” although I don’t agree with the punishable by crime statement I do think that people should be warned and deterred from cyberbullying in
Cyberbullying and the First Amendment Matthew Trotti Grand Canyon University: POS 500 2/23/16 Cyberbullying and the First Amendment In todays world and the 21st century technology is everywhere and access to that technology is at everyone’s fingertips. Due to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter things like cyberbullying have become a new way of bullying. The definition of cyberbullying is “bullying that takes place using electronic technology” (What is Cyberbullying). This paper will talk about the topic of cyberbullying and the steps that I am required to take if I hear from a student that they are being bullied on Facebook.
McClatchy writes for a national newspaper in Minnesota and is currently drawing attention to cyber bullying. She explores new methods to combat this new type of bullying, which is derived from the internet. This article provides examples on several solutions that have been employed by different states to resolve the issue. Many state governments have come up with new laws requiring schools to construct policies to counter cyber bullying. The article also quotes a professor from John Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public health; he states that the increased usage and reliance on the Internet and smartphones will have a big impact towards cyber bullying.
Imagine wanting to kill yourself just because some dumb people decide to pick on you every day. It is horrid knowing that 12.1 per cent of students consider suicide yearly from bullying. So today I am arguing that bullying in Australia has been pushed too far away from other events like Covid 19 that we neglect the appalling consequences that bullying can affect us students and teenagers. There are three reasons I want to speak about bullying today: bullying in Australia affects students tremendously, bullying never ceases and affects the economy and lastly, bullying can lead to many suicides and this should be a crime.
Victims of cyberbullying may experience negative impacts on their academic or professional lives, as well as their personal relationships. For example, cyberbullying can lead to decreased school attendance, lower grades, and even dropping out of school. Similarly, cyberbullying can impact an individual's ability to find and maintain employment, as potential employers may be able to access negative information about them online. By working to delete cyberbullying, we can prevent these long-term consequences and ensure that everyone has a fair chance to succeed in
MILLER, K. (2017). CYBERBULLYING AND ITS CONSEQUENCES: HOW CYBERBULLYING IS CONTORTING THE MINDS OF VICTIMS AND BULLIES ALIKE, AND THE LAW 'S LIMITED AVAILABLE REDRESS. Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal, 26(2),
In the text, it states” 60% of targets said that their online experiences as a target of cyberbullying affected them at school, home, and with friends, and reported experiences with frustration, anger, and sadness.” This shows how cyberbullying will and can affect teens. Another thing that can happen to teens is that they can get physically hurt. Will people tolerate this? In the text it says” bypassing the Prevention Act, we're deterring people from engaging in cyberbullying by showing such behavior is a punishable crime that won't be tolerated.”
In the ever changing nature of society, technology has become an everyday part of life for children in Australia. However, this emergence of technology has also opened up these children to something a lot more sinister: cyberbullying. A recent article by Wilson (2016, April 16) for news.com has discussed this so-called ‘scourge’ of cyberbullying in Australia wherein victims have experienced false rumours, ridicule, and the doctoring of images in order to cause humiliation. Price & Dalgleish (2010) also discussed this issue and outlined cyberbullying as being an extension of ‘typical’ bullying that occurs through technology (i.e. internet and mobile phones) in order to cause emotional distress to someone through “threats, social exclusion tactics,
With social media being as popular as it is, Face to face bullying at School or at the workplace tends to follow the victim home via their devices. However, Social media have updated their Terms & Conditions to counteract Cyber bullying and now offer a report feature that can cause the bully to have their social media account suspended or even banned. The government implemented a law that outlaws cyber bully and has even made it a crime, the new laws state that cyber bullies could face two years behind bars. However, cyberbullying only became publicised when several high profile cases came to light in the years around 2010, such as the Amanda Todd case in 2012 which resulted in the bully being charged for Manslaughter and breaking the Computer Misuse Law of
“In January, Illinois became the latest state to pass a law to punish students for cyberbullying that happens off campus”. A 15-year-old from Cinnaminson, New Jersey named Hanna Di Massimo said,” cyberbullying may always happen while you’re at school, but it always makes a living nightmare.” When a student is being bullied by another student at school, that behavior falls under the schools jurisdiction, and administration should punish the harasser. “If an administrator really wants to stop cyberbullying, they should teach the students why it’s wrong, how it hurts people, and what they can do to stop
Some of the things that would help with future approaches with cyberbullying are examining the experiences, insights, and actions of school professionals with respect to cyberbullies in other regions, investigating the relationship between problem awareness, perceived accountability, and self-efficacy when talking about cyberbullying and recording the number and nature of the tangible cyberbullying activities that are being taken and lastly, exploring the conclusions further using qualitative approaches. When taking all of the new information that the future studies will give us, it will give better information on why cyberbullying exists and a better way of putting an end to
People say it violates the 1st amendment but it can be taken too far; too many people can get hurt because of cyberbullying they should be prosecuted. Many people have committed suicide because of cyberbullying it isn’t fair to all the innocent victims who died if nothing happens to the bully. Cyberbullying can lead to depression or abandoned. If someone