Should Cyber-bulling be a Crime?
So before I get into why cyber-bullying should be a crime lets first identify what exactly is cyber-bullying. According to Hudson Horizons it means; aggravated harassment transmitted through technological means, such as emails, text messages, cell phone communications, pagers, or social networking websites.
Contention 1: Cyber bullying should be considered a crime because it is especially heinous. Once you get down to the center of why a person cyber bullies its because he wants to hurt the other person for very little to no reason at all. Also many cyber bullying cases end in not a very good way. Some kids our age or younger think that death is easier that dealing with that bully. Around 10 percent of all adolescents in grades 7-9 are victims of internet bullying according to sciencedaily.com. This is not some small one or two percent of the child population. This is 10 percent of children, hundreds of thousands to millions of kids. We really need to stop this pandemic if millions are being affected. If not know then when can we act on this. We can’t wait any longer.
According to kamaron.org there has already been three suicides as a result from cyber bullying in 2010. That is a dramatic increase from the years before when they started taking data in 2000. Actually in a 2000 survey from Crimes Against Children Research found out that out of 1500 pre-teens and teenagers, 6% of have been cyber bullied. In a 2004 survey by I-Safe America they surveyed 1500 kids from the same age group and 42% reported to have been cyber bullied. That’s an alarming rate for cyber bullying. Just imagine what the results of the survey will be next year if this trend keeps on going up. About one third (32%) of all teenagers who use the internet say they have been targets of a range of annoying and potentially damaging online activities such as cyber bullying according to Lenhart in 2007. Lenhart also states that some cyber bullying can be taken to...