When we talked about this topic in class, we were all caught off by this topic. It is quite
catching, and sad. When discussing this we realized that there are many factors in this topic.
Especially when you are trying to figure out who is at fault for this. There is the possibility
of blaming the neighbors for creating a fake person, you could blame MySpace for being a way for
people to fake an identity, or you could also blame the parents of Megan for allowing her to be
on those sites at such a young age. With the possibility of there being so many people at fault,
we then looked deeper into the topic to see if any laws were broken or what unethical behaviors
were performed.
We started with the least likely option we thought, which was that the parents should be at
fault. Yes, the parents should be watching over what their children should be doing on the internet
and what they are looking at. Especially in this case where Megan was known to be depressed, and
that she had A.D.D. Megan was 13 years old though, so from our stand point she seemed to be old
enough to know better, and to be able to have a MySpace. It is common for people to talk to others
and try to get to know them, hopefully they would just talk to people they know. Unfortunately
Megan did encounter conversations with a random boy, at the time it seemed to harmless but MySpace
allowed for it to happen. Maybe that could give you reason to say MySpace is to blame for this.
We then talked about what we thought about MySpace being at fault for Megan’s suicide. This
could have been possible because MySpace was the site that made it possible for someone on another
computer to fake their identity and talk to random people. When thinking about this you have to
think that you cannot just randomly talk to someone, they have to accept your friend request then
you can strike up a conversation. So that does turn it to the people again. There is also an act
that states that a social networking site cannot be at fault for hate crime, and that it falls on
the persons who influence the hate crime. Then we started thinking that it had to fall on the people
being at fault.
That forced us to move on to thinking that the neighbors were at fault. They were the ones who
were talking to Megan. We don’t know who started the talking, or if there was one that had more of
an effect on the situation. It is obvious that it had a huge effect on Megan though, and she actually
started falling for this boy. Then they performed a hate crime by telling her that she was cruel,
making her feel terrible, and in the end lead her to take her own life. That seemed to be enough
evidence for us to come to the conclusion that the neighbors were at fault for Megan’s death.
You then have to wonder if what they did was illegal or not, and if any further legal action should
be taken. We decided they there was not anything illegal that they did. They had their freedom of
speech which allowed them to say what they wanted behind a keyboard. Was it ethical? No, but that is
not enough to put someone in jail. The only other possible thing they could be accused of might be
stealing an identity, but they did not steal an identity they just made someone up, so that is legal.
The sad thing is that there really is not much that can be done to prevent this from happening. All
people can do is try to be smart and think about what they are doing before they do it, and think about
who they are dealing with. Another person might take something a different way than the way you take it.
Parents can try and set stronger restrictions on their children but at what point do they get to give
them more freedom and let them be able to do things on their own. That is a question that people will
have to ask themselves and make their own decision.