Computer-mediated communications is a very fast, convenient, and reliable way to communicate with your friends and family. Through CMC, it’s so much easier to stay connected with your old high school buddies and network with your new-found friends. Unfortunately, with the benefits of CMC come the drawbacks, and although the benefits of CMC are many, the drawbacks are also numerous.
Most of the drawbacks of CMC are just relative annoyances. Trolling is defined as “Intentionally disrupting an online community.” Scroll through youtube comments or any web forum/social media site/website comment section and you’ll see examples of trolling. Most trolling, while very annoying, is relatively harmless, consisting of comments such as “Beyonce sucks d--k” on the Beyonce music video on Youtube or “ur a loser” on a web discussion forum. Unfortunately, hate speech is also featured prominently on trolling activity, as hate speech, although legally protected, is socially frowned upon in face-to-face activity, and as a result many people retreat online to let loose their true feelings about specific groups, ethnicities, sexual orientations, etc.
Apart from having your feelings hurt by a troll however, there are other much darker aspects of computer mediated communications. Cyberbullying, defined as willful and repeated harm inflicted through phones and computers, is a very real and harmful problem of CMC. Cyberbullying may range from teasing texts to harassing a user’s profile, in which comments such as “Go kill yourself” or “No one likes you” are often posted against the victim. While the conventional schoolyard bully can only hurt you during school hours and you’d be safe once you got home, the cyberbully can hurt you at all hours of the day, through simply logging on to Facebook or writing a quick text. Despite many high-profile suicides in recent years due to cyberbullying, the laws for cyberbullying vary in each state, and there is still no clear precedent for cyberbullying in a court of law.
Consider the tragic case of Megan Meier. Megan Meier was a 13-year old teenage girl in Missouri who suffered from ADD, depression, and had self-esteem issues with her body weight. After opening an account on MySpace in 2006, she quickly befriended a guy named “Josh Evans”, and quickly became infatuated with him, constantly messaging back-and-forth with him. On October 16, 2006, the relationship Megan had with Josh Evans took a horrible turn, as Josh abruptly ended the online relationship and shared some of Megan’s private messages with other, and private bulletins were posted of her. Megan committed suicide after receiving messages from Josh Evans such as “You are a bad person and everyone hates you.” and “The world would be a better place without you.”
It was later discovered that Megan’s neighbor Lori Drew, her daughter Sarah, and one of Lori’s employees named Ashley Grills were responsible for setting up the Josh Evans account and mercilessly harassing Megan. Megan had reportedly had a falling out with Sarah, and Sarah’s mother’s retribution was the cause of Megan’s tragic suicide. Unfortunately, none of those responsible for the horrid cyberbullying that led to Megan’s tragic death were ever held responsible, as Lori Drew was convicted on charges of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which she was later acquitted on.
The suicides of Megan Meier and many others demonstrate a cold, sobering reality: although computer mediated communications is an amazing way to connect with old friends and make new ones, and is a quick and efficient way to communicate with others, computer mediated communications is not without its dangers. The trolls you see on youtube comments and web forums may annoy the ever-loving shit out of you, but in this new age of computers and online communications, the bullies who used to taunt you in the schoolyard has moved on to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. When you once had the comfort of knowing that the bully would be gone once you reached the safety of your own house, today you can log onto your Facebook page and the bully will be there, harassing you on your Facebook comments, texting you hurtful words at all hours of the day, and even worse, there is no clear guarantee that the law will protect you from a cyberbully. Although computer mediated communications will go down as one of the most important advances of technology in mankind, cyberbullying is like a cancer that is casting its shadow over CMC, leaving some users emotionally harmed and leading others to physically hurt themselves, and something must be done about this.
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