Cyberbullying: An Analysis of Its Impact and Legal Aspects

This report examines cyberbullying, exploring its impact on individuals, particularly adolescents, and its societal implications. It highlights cyberbullying as a significant form of harassment, often occurring through social media platforms. The report delves into the legal aspects of cyberbullying, discussing whether it should be treated as a criminal offense, and the challenges associated with enforcing laws in the digital sphere. It references relevant studies and cases, such as the Megan Meier case, to illustrate the severity of the issue and the potential consequences, including suicide. Furthermore, the report acknowledges the complexities of cyberbullying, suggesting it is not solely a legal issue, but also a social one, and discusses the perspectives of law enforcement and mental health professionals on the topic. The report also includes a detailed list of references.

Running head: BUILDING ARGUMENT
BUILDING ARGUMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the Organization
Author Note

1BUILDING ARGUMENT
Cyberbullying is a criminal offence
Cyberbullying includes
several illegal acts like emails
which are very much abusive
or harassing texts on
Facebook (Broll & Huey
2015). This is a huge form of
harassment for all kinds of
ages who are facing them
actually.
Cyberbullying is considered
to be an epidemic in case of
children. Most of the reports
say that eight out of ten
people of young generation
are severe victims of
cyberbullying at some of their
life’s stages (Álvarez-García
et al. 2016).
This huge problem of
cyberbullying has horrible
results which lead to revenge
or murders of a large number
of innocents. (Cornell and
Limber 2015).
Cyberbullying report 2013 says
that mainly the young generation
people are mostly severe victims
of cyberbullying at several stages
of their lives.
With respect to children,
criminal offences should be
applied in all of the
cyberbullying cases which are
very much severe or serious.
Most of the teenagers
always complain about
receiving harassing or
disturbing calls and
messages from several
people who finds fun in
cyberbullying (da Silva
Pereira, de Matos and
Oliveira 2015).
It has been found twice that
Facebook is a social network
platform for excessive
cyberbullying (Shariff 2015).
People irrespective of any age
and even involving the
celebrities are experiencing
excess cyberbullying on a daily
basis. Megan Meier is possibly
considered as the highest
profile case of suicide of child
which can be linked to
bullying online.Cyberbullying must not be treated as a
criminal offence. Many people enjoys
using the internet for remaining
anonymous. If the government
considers cyberbullying as a criminal
offense, then people will be afraid to
share their thoughts online.
Cyberbullying problem is not an
illegal problem fundamentally, but a
social one as argued by The Mental
Health Commissions of Australia

2BUILDING ARGUMENT
References
Álvarez-García, D., Barreiro-Collazo, A., Núñez, J.C. and Dobarro, A., 2016. Validity and
reliability of the Cyber-aggression Questionnaire for Adolescents (CYBA). The
European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context, 8(2), pp.69-77.
Broll, R. and Huey, L., 2015. “Just being mean to somebody isn’ta police matter”: Police
perspectives on policing cyberbullying. Journal of school violence, 14(2), pp.155-176.
Cornell, D. and Limber, S.P., 2015. Law and policy on the concept of bullying at
school. American Psychologist, 70(4), p.333.
da Silva Pereira, F., de Matos, M.A.V. and Oliveira, Á.M.D.C.G., 2015. Cyber-crimes against
adolescents: Bridges between a psychological and a design approach. In Handbook of
research on digital crime, cyberspace security, and information assurance (pp. 211-230).
IGI Global.
Shariff, S., 2015. Sexting and Cyberbullying. Cambridge University Press.