Final Project: Memo to the Attorney General : Cyber Bullying - Essay Example

Viruses, hacking, and harassment are some examples of the ways in which this medium is misused. Social networking sites and emails have often been used to harass or bully people through cyberspace without any form of physical contact. The increasing instances of cyber bullying and stalking have resulted in serious concerns among individuals, the state, and the Federal Government in the United States. It has come to the notice of the state and Federal authorities that appropriate statutes and laws need to be introduced to reduce or prevent this form of electronic harassment, which has led to nine suicides and two homicides in the United States.

This paper is a report that outlines proposed statutes to be forwarded to the Attorney General which will also include sentencing guidelines wherever possible. The consequences of cyber bullying have risen to relatively alarming proportions to the extent that statutes in many states in the country have been modified to include harassment through electronic media to be a crime. The Division of Criminal Justice Services, state of New York defined this as “the repeated use of information technology, including e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, chat rooms, pagers, cell phones, and gaming systems, to deliberately harass, threaten or intimidate others.

Unlike physical bullying, where the victim can walk away, technology now allows for continuous harassment, from any distance, in a variety of ways” (Cyber bullying, n.d.). But there is another viewpoint that bullying electronically is done by children below the age of seventeen and does not include such acts done by adults. According to the definition provided by stopcyberbullying.org, it occurs “when a child, preteen or teen is tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted by another child, preteen or teen using the Internet, interactive and digital technologies or mobile phones.

It has to have a minor on both sides, or at least