Bonus Assignment - Anonymity and Online Harassment

As the Internet becomes even more of a ubiquitous presence in our lives, the relationship between social psychology and online interaction will continue to grow. It is likely we will become increasingly dependent on it as a utility as time progresses, to the point where a good number of very basic services (such as banking and shopping) will only be done electronically. With the steady increases in dependency and level of access come previously unseen phenomena, as well as old issues upgraded for the current age; some of which are, indeed, problematic.

Recently, the blogosphere has been in an uproar over the suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier, who was reportedly the victim of "cyber-bullying" at the hands of Lori Drew, a friend of the family whose daughter went to school with Megan. Drew posed as a boy named "Josh Evans" on Myspace and proceeded to become well-acquainted with Megan under the scrutiny of the girl's parents. Some time passed, and the messages suddenly became disparaging, then hateful; eventually culminating with a statement that said the world would be a better place without her, to which the girl promptly committed suicide. There are conflicting reports as to what originally sparked this situation (some say Megan was the classic school bully, still others say she was merely targeted for being unattractive and emotionally unstable), but the prosecuting attorney has decided not to press charges against Drew, since a) there is no legal precedent for the situation, and b) it cannot be proven the words of "Josh Evans" are, specifically, what drove Megan over the edge.

Patricia Wallace in The Psychology of the Internet addresses the issue of 'trolling' in relationship to establishing superiority and group cohesion (101). In a lot of ways, the issues are similar; however, most trolling usually occurs at random in a relatively isolated environment, leads to flame wars, and fizzles out in a short amount of time. In this particular situation, you have consistent and targeted psychological manipulation of a minor by an adult posing as a peer. Because multi-use/level services such as Myspace and Facebook didn't exist at the time of publication, it stands to reason that this phenomenon is undocumented. However, she postulates that the relative anonymity lent by computer mediated communication is directly linked to whether, how, and to what degree individuals express aggression. Could this have a hand in how far Drew chose to take the Josh Evans persona, originally intended as a joke? Following that, how responsible is she for Megan's death?

A simple Youtube search for 'cyber + bullying' yields a myriad of results, most of which seek to inform the casual user about the phenomenon. The sheer number of hits implies that this phenomenon is not uncommon, to the point where special interest groups are urging Congress to pass legislature that would define harassing someone over the internet as a punishable offense. If a law is passed, it will have far-reaching implications for online interactions as well as free-speech laws in general. As far as the course is concerned, despite our in-depth discussions of the effects of anonymity on self-presentation, I believe that the topic of cyber-bullying will become more and more of an issue as most of our world moves into the online arena, and should be addressed in further depth.