Thomas Dowd

Mass Communication theory

Professor Zimdars

Blog #2

                                                           Social Media and Bullying

            I’ll never forget my first day of freshman year of high school when I sat down next too a very sweet looking girl. She immediately turned towards me and sparked up a conversation. We instantly hit it off and became pretty good friends. Her name was Phoebe Prince. She had just moved to my hometown from Ireland.  As the year went on she made a lot of friends, also some enemies. She began dating a senior football player that made some upper class girls unhappy. They began bullying her to the point where she committed suicide in January of freshman year. Not only was she bullied in school but on social media as well. These girls were leaving violent Facebook statuses that were cruel and hurtful.  After her fatal death, those teens were charged with felonies including violations of civil rights, criminal harassment, and stalking. This raises a big question, should parents be a held liable for what their kids say on the Internet?

            An argument that should be talked about more is if the parents should be held liable for what their kids are saying on the Internet. Kids nowadays are on multiple social media cites, which creates more than enough opportunities for them to negatively interact with others. If a law is passed, parents will feel the urgent need to continuously monitor their kid’s on the Internet. Some parents have absolutely no idea of how cruel their kids actually can be and they should be the ones to blame because they’re not raising them correctly or aren’t morally intact enough to prevent their kids from being considered dangerous to society. The argument presented can help prevent cyber bullying to say the least. Adults will not only be more cautious but the kids will also be because their parents will be permanently instilling how wrong it is into their children’s heads to be cruel to someone, especially over the internet Both the parents and children could end up in big trouble, so parents will always be monitoring what their kids say for their well-being as well. This law will ultimately make this world a better place. More and more people will be brought up the right way, and being cruel to someone will be better known as a crime, because it is. When this event happened I knew one of the teens that was being charged for this criminal act. She came from a nice, humble family with good morals. However, she let the emotions get to her and she now completely regrets it. If her mom knew what being said on social media she would have put a stop to this and would have definitely intervened and maybe there would have been a different outcome.

Parents trust their kids with their use on social media and if your son or daughter is using social media in a negative manner then they should be held somewhat accountable for their son or daughter’s actions. There are multiple cases where parents claim if they knew what was going on they would have put to stop to this for their children’s safety. One story a mother talks about how her thirteen-year-old daughter was a victim of a cyber-bullying hoax that went on too far. “Although, the victim’s mom noticed how troubled the relationship became, the friendship, between the two teens still continued. The victims’ mom stated she called the police, and asked them for help in determining if the account was in fact, a real account, but they could not help her. The relationship hit a really large bump in the road, when the teen received a message that was very unpleasant. That message caused a noticeable ripple effect in their relationship that would lead to many tragic and disturbing events.” This quote shows how serious cyber-bullying can get. Which raises another question, what is the law enforcement doing about cyber-bullying? It is hard for law enforcement to get involved with these types of cases because so many individuals use false profiles and it is hard to find out who is really saying these nasty things. I believe that school resource officers should be constantly monitoring the schools Internet to try and reduce cyber-bullying cases. Also, relating this back to Phoebe Prince, law enforcers criminally charged those teens for what they did and that brought a lot of media attention. ‘‘811 news stories were written about her in 45 countries’’ (Bergman, 2010, p. A17). Details of the Prince bullycide were covered on news channels (e.g., Fox and CNN), in national newspapers (e.g., The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and USA Today), magazines (e.g., People and Newsweek), and on morning television programs (such as The Early Show, The Today Show, and The View).”  This quote shows how much attention this case got and it opened a lot of people’s eyes on how this tragic event is happening a lot more then we think. If the media keeps surfacing these events I think it will help reduce the amount of cyber-bullying attacks.

Cyber-bullying is serious matter and we need to start taking more action because kids lives are being ruined over something that can be fixed. Phoebe Prince was a great example of this. Her story was through over 45 countries and it spread a lot of awareness. However, it is still going on. Parents need to start being aware of whom their kids are associating themselves with. Law enforcement also needs to make a bigger presence in this matter. Our town lost a very sweet girl to an issue that could have been prevented.

                                                            Works Cited

Ryalls, Emily. "Demonizing ‘‘Mean Girls’’ in the News: Was Phoebe Prince ‘‘Bullied to Death?’’." N.p., n.d. Web.

"Cyber Bullying Parents Stories." NoBullying Bullying CyberBullying Resources. N.p., 10 Sept. 2013. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.

Nathan, Laurie. "Stopbullying Blog." How Should Law Enforcement Respond to Cyberbullying Incidents? N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.