Katie Belden CS408-01 Assignment 6
Group 6: MySpace Suicide
“MySpace Suicide,” the name of Topic # 2, revolves around a 13-year-old girl named Megan Meier, who suffered from depression and attention deficit disorder. She began talking to a young boy named Josh, whom she had met on MySpace. After talking online for about a month, Josh started saying mean things to her and ended their friendship. As a result, Megan ended her life. “Josh” turned out to be made up, and was created by individuals of a family in the neighborhood. Megan’s parents hope that the family is prosecuted for what they did to their daughter.
Whenever I hear stories similar to Megan’s, I always wonder who is to blame for her death, if anyone? Many people would instantly say that MySpace or other social networking sites are at fault for these types of incidents. I can see why people might think that, but our group didn’t believe the sites should be held solely responsible, only to a certain degree. We believe social networking sites could do a much better job at improving their privacy settings and making sure children are being protected by Internet predators, such as “Josh.”
When it comes to the parents, we strongly believe they are also somewhat responsible for what happened. The Internet is full of inappropriate information and people, which can all be easily accessed by children if their parents are not carefully monitoring them. Personally, I don’t believe any girl at the age of 13 should be on MySpace. That is a very sensitive age especially for young girls. In Megan’s case, since her parents were aware of her depression, they should have been extra careful, and worked to protect her even more so, knowing she would be extremely sensitive. We also believe the parents of the family that created “Josh,” and had the interaction with Megan, are also somewhat responsible for what happened. They too should have been monitoring their children on the Internet.
With incidents like these, it is very difficult to say if anyone should be held criminally libel. In Megan’s case, no one told her to commit suicide, but the combination of all the influential factors are what led Megan to take her life. Everyone involved in cases like this should be equally prosecuted, if legal action is to take place. Megan’s parents should have been more careful about watching their daughter with depression, the neighborhood family should NOT have created Josh and tormented her, and lastly MySpace should have had higher safety standards in place on their site to safeguard children. In this case, both online bullying and defamation of character occurred, and the family that created Josh may have been found libel in a court of law, if this case was tried.
Many things can be done to prevent such horrible incidents. For starters, social networking sites should be more aware about what is going on around them. They need to understand that young children are at risk when engaging in activities on their sites that may include exposure to online predators and/or online bullying. Individuals under the age of 18 should have their conversations monitored and any inappropriate comments or harsh remarks removed. Failure to do so could then result in legal action against the site, should something like this occur. Also, the sites should work harder to identify and remove profiles that are fraudulent, like that of Josh. False identity is extremely common among networking sites and it should be stopped. Secondly, parents need to pay more attention to their children. Parents need to inform their kids at a very young age what they should and shouldn’t do on the Internet, and how dangerous it can be. Since technology is becoming an increasingly large part of today’s society, it is crucial for parents to monitor their children’s activities on the Internet, and special attention given to those children with special needs or mental illness.
Megan was cyberbullied. As a group, we discussed how cyberbullying is a crime because it can lead to harm and sometimes suicide, not only Megan’s case, but in many other cases of children who have been affected by cyber bullying.