Last year a 12yo girl in NJ killed herself after ongoing online torment by peers. Reportedly, she was repeatedly urged on Facebook to kill herself and finally did.
The story has reemerged in the news because the girl’s parents hired a big shot attorney who is suing the school she attended and, possibly, the bullies’ parents (whose kids were also 12). Today’s story didn’t have all the details, here are the generalities: The girl’s parents allege that the school knew of the ongoing bullying problem and handled the situation badly, both in meat space and online. They also say the bullies’ parents were made aware of the problem and didn’t take care of it.
I don’t have kids, my college students’ social media lives are a mystery to me (and I work very hard to keep it a mystery!) Our campus policy is basically “don’t use our system to do asshole things online. If you do something will maybe happen to you.” Besides telling a few students I wasn’t going to argue with them about a grade by email (“come see me in person”), I’ve not experienced dastardly online situations.
Please enlighten me:
How and why are schools held accountable for online behavior that uses personal devices/net connections off school property and outside of school hours? What are the grounds for holding a school responsible for actions “after hours?”
I thought FB, Snapchat, Instagram, and so on have TOCs wherein age 13 and under kids may not have a personal account? This is very easily negotiated around, of course, but the girl and her tormenters were exchanging taunts on FB as underage, unauthorized users. Isn’t this a parenting problem, not a website/school issue?
I know the creepy young woman who coerced a troubled guy into suicide via texts got in a heap of trouble, I’m sure the parent’s attorney will use this as precedent. But I don’t know how I feel about prosecuting on the basis of speech (it’s horrific asshole behavior, but free speech . . .) I’m interested in hearing opinions.
I am immensely grateful social media didn’t exist in the '80s when I was a teen and I can’t imagine the awful online shit parents have to deal with today; if my 12yo kid killed themselves due to this type of bullying I’d probably be in jail for doing bad things to the perpetrators.
I don’t know the answers to your questions, but I have suspicions.
If the school tried to do something about the bullying in person, i.e. at the school with the assorted children in attendance, that could be considered an implicit assumption of some responsibility for the situation.
I also suspect that the online bullying was an extension of in-person bullying (or vice versa) so that some of it was actually happening at the school.
I’ll bet the parents of the bully children will console themselves with the mantras “I had no idea what was going on; that girl must have been awfully fragile [i.e. blame the victim], I don’t want to ruin my child’s life from this incident [i.e. diminish the victim’s value]” and others like that.
I think the free speech issue is very nuanced. It may depend on what kind of words and expressions were used. If it was something like “nobody likes you, you are worthless, you’d be better off dead” I don’t see much that can be done. If it was something that could be characterized as hate speech, there may be some legal redress. Isn’t there a law, at least in some jurisdictions, against calling to people standing on a ledge to “jump, jump?” This could be similar, again depending on specifics.
I heard of a situation at my daughters highschool. One boy was calling a girl nasty names and showing pics of a nude girl and saying it was her. It wasn’t the girl, it seems. Her parent complained to the school. Nothing they could do. The girls brother got on line and threatened this boy. Claiming he was gonna beat him up if he didn’t stop. The boys parents complained to the school. Guess who got suspended from school? Yep, the girls brother. Why is it ok to taunt and vilify the girl and it’s not ok to threaten the boy?? I don’t get it.
I don’t know all the particulars of this case, but I can share some ideas based on things that happened in my son’s case. I would guess that the girl knew the students through school. It’s likely that online is not the only place she was bullied, and that they bullied her at school as well. I would guess that not only were they bullying her, they were also making certain that others at school were aware of it. Others at school may have joined in. They may also have been using school equipment, such as computers, to bully her.
As far as how the school could be at fault, if the school did not stop the bullying once it was brought to their attention, they have a problem. If the children are all connected through school, and the parents asked for help addressing this issue, I think the school may have a hard time demonstrating that they are not culpable in some way.
Do you know if the first boy was an athlete, or the sibling of one, or the son of a school employee or a family that is wealthy or prominent in the community? That can make a BIIIIG difference in how things are handled.
This doesn’t sound so much about gender as it is the principle of “He who hits 2nd, gets punished, he who hits first, gets off scot free.” Like the student who keeps poking and tickling another student in class, but when the victim finally lashes back, the teacher punishes the victim but not the instigator.
This hits close to home. My kids’ high school has a relational aggression (Mean Girls style bullying) issue which my daughter took the end of - including the “no one likes you, you’d be better off dead, you should just kill yourself” texts - which in her case were sent through an anonymous service so we couldn’t point fingers (though we had a pretty good idea). She has anxiety, depression and severe ADHD. She spent her senior year in high school at the community college, and it stopped when she was no longer a target they could watch.
They had two suicides last year.
The school handled it very poorly - they should have found a way to remove her from school when the texts started - even if it meant sending her to a different high school. They also allowed the kids who were actually bullying her in class to get away with it. She went to London with the theatre group, and rather than the adults in the group being warned, she got ditched in London (not a big deal, she can make her way around London) - but there were adult chaperones with every group, and they didn’t realize they’d “lost” her until she met them back at the group meeting place.
What can parents and the school do? Separate the kids. Parents can monitor social media accounts - there are parent watch apps for phones and computers. When schools are made aware of the bullying, staff should keep an extra eye out. Schools should limit access to phones during the school day and if a parent is told that their kid is suspected of this behavior, their phones should be removed. That won’t stop it, but it would help when the victim’s family sues.
Relational aggression is horrifying because its sneaky.
Oh, the other thing that schools and parents can do is explain to kids their liability in the situation. You can end up in jail. Your parents can get sued and found liable. Both have happened. Michelle Carter is in jail. Is Telling Someone to Commit Suicide a Crime?
That’s fine for a child with the requisite self confidence and discipline to weather it, but it sounds suspiciously like blaming the victim for not being “tougher”. Not everyone is constructed that way.
I don’t have any answers here, but if a school becomes aware of cyber bullying going on, I don’t think there’s any question that they have the responsibility to call the bullies and the parents into a meeting and lay down the law. Absolutely zero tolerance and here are the consequences. Likewise, if a parent becomes aware their kid is doing this, they have a responsibility to teach, discipline, whatever it takes to turn the situation around including notifying the school. I think in some cases where the parents are aware of the situation, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The parents of these kids were sometimes the bullies themselves in high school, they just lacked the instant messaging. What I find so sad and scary about all of this is the complete lack of empathy on the part of the bullies. By the time a child is in middle school and especially high school they should have some concept of doing unto others and what if it were me, how would it make me feel, they should be able to transfer those feelings and begin to understand how their victim may feel.
So, there are going to be a few problems if it escalates to mean girl style bullying…
The person bullying them will create accounts that appear to be your kids’ friends, and bully through those accounts. They will also borrow the phones of mutual friends for “just a second” to send texts directly from friends…this will isolate you kid from any support system they have.
The person bullying will use social media to tell lies about your kid to other kids - in my daughter’s case she had broken her foot. The whole school believed she was “faking it for attention” - I even had to provide x-rays to the theater director because he told her she could dance on it because she was “just faking it.” Or if they don’t believe the bully, they at least “don’t want to take sides” - and if the bully has social power (and they usually do), that has the same effect. This further isolates your kid.
Now your kid is isolated and the text messages start coming in anonymously. “No one likes you…you’d be better off dead.”
By the way, almost every teen I know has multiple social media accounts on the same platform. My daughter has at least two Instagram accounts that I know of…one that she lets me follow her on, and another on which I respect her privacy (but I know about it). My son has a few, and probably more I don’t know about - but at almost 20, he has all the privacy a young adult still living at home is entitled to.
That’s good information, thanks. But this: "I even had to provide x-rays to the theater director because he told her she could dance on it because she was “just faking it” is just ridiculous. I would have went off on that teacher. What kind of teacher does this?
The problem is that a single threat is a crime while a single taunt is not. Cyber-bullying has to be recognized as harassment that can rise to a criminal level.
I seriously doubt every text, FB, etc., occurred outside of school, so if it was reported to them they share some responsibility. Of course if any teacher or staff member had been insulted they would have had the student involved expelled and arrested immediately.
An idiot and an asshole. And one who is more of a high schooler himself than an adult - he’s also the one who was responsible for losing her in London - and much of the problem. But the schools response to complaint was “she doesn’t have to do theater.”
If there are any other parents facing this, take it seriously. Get a lawyer if you have to, and don’t hesitate to remove your child from the situation. This is not a “toughen up and live with it” life lesson. Everyone grows up at a different pace. The lesson they really need to learn is “my parents have my back”.
Yep, insist that the school find another place for your kid. We toughed it out her Junior year…it really didn’t get bad until about two months before her Junior year ended, and by then we knew she was doing her Senior year somewhere else. But her grades took a hit.
We had a close friend of ours (and hers, she’s a weird kid whose parents friends are her friends) commit suicide right as this was starting - and she saw up close the damage suicide does to family and friends - and in an adult non-hormonal-teenager way - she’s said if that hadn’t happened she might not have made it through.
Even if the bullying occurs off school grounds or outside of school hours, bullying that’s escalated to that point has typically also occurred at school and other environments as well. While I wouldn’t necessarily hold the school 100% liable (the other kids’ parents and the kids themselves are moreso in my mind), they do play some part in monitoring and reporting bullying to all parties.
My 12 year old was bullied by this kid down the street (who moved, thank goodness - could not wait to see him go) who posted pics of him on Snapchat with things like, “gay,” “looooves the boys,” “eats ass” and other stuff plastered all over the photos. This same kid had also been suspended from school multiple times for taunting another kid at the middle school who was transgender to the point where his parents were really concerned about his mental wellbeing.
When I called his mom to let her know what was going on and to have her son take the photo down, she played it off like “Oh, he just thinks it’s a joke, but he’s not supposed to have social media. This isn’t the first time this has happened.” He took it down, but what kid in his right mind at 12 years old doesn’t know that actions and language like that will have a negative impact? Yeah, kids make shitty decisions all the time, but decisions like those are intended to hurt and they generally follow a pattern. Plus, his mom’s lackadaisical attitude about the whole situation made me want to scream. And, of course, after he was busted, the kid only went on to find another victim.
I cannot reiterate enough times how glad I was to see that family move. I only wish that records like that transferred from state to state and school to school to protect other kids.