The internet is vast network of tools and resources and should be treated as such, but with millions of users interacting every single day, what are the laws governing it’s usage? Where is the line drawn between privacy and monitoring? Free speech and bullying? An article known as “Glendale District Says Social Media Monitoring Is for Student Safety” by Stephen Ceasar really brought up a lot of really interesting points in regards to this, some of which I would like to discuss. Overall, this has given me mixed opinions, but, I have my own proposal for how this system could work, which would be effective in protecting rights as well as students.
To start off, perhaps we should address the worry of invading on the freedom of speech or privacy. From my personal experience as both a supporter of freedom of speech and a victim of bullying, we don’t necessarily have to monitor private details and personal conversations, although I applaud Glendale in their efforts. Rather than monitoring all social media accounts owned by students (which would cost millions of dollars considering the terabytes of data that we, teenagers, use every day), why don’t they just enact legislation which would give educational institutions and/or police forces the right to seize the data for specific accounts? This would work similar to the way a warrant would work for a house arrest, instead, it can be a warrant to seize a Facebook account. I’ve personally been a victim of cyber-bullying multiple times in the past, and I assure you, it’s not fun to check Facebook and see a status posted saying “If you hate Thomas Burleigh, say I” along with multiple other inappropriate, vulgar, word. Again, it doesn’t mean we have to resort to extensive monitoring of everybody’s private conversations to stop it. Warrant systems are a fair way of handling the situation on a case-to-case basis while at the same time, protecting the rights to freedom and privacy of the average user, both of which are important.
There’s an interesting point I’d like to bring up as well, what’s going to stop people from continuing? Personally, as a student, whenever I’ve had bullying innocents, the situation was silenced once the school took care of it. However, in many places, this is not the case and the situation continues to escalate further simply due to the school’s lack of punishment for bullying. Schools need to increase the punishment for cyber-bullying as many schools just offer a “tap on the wrist” or a 1 day in-school suspension. Although some people may stop after the first warning, some will continue to bully and harass people resulting in continuous 1 day suspensions which have no effect on the student. What we need, for those involved in cyber-bullying, they need counselling. People who try to bring others down behind a computer screen clearly have problems they need to sort out, and a counselor can do that for them and hopefully cause them to avoid bullying in the future.
To summarize, I feel this school district and many others have the right idea. Many things including a warrant system to seize an account and perhaps improved counselling services can see the rates of suicide and depression among teenagers decrease. This is a big change but I feel it’s in the right direction. Again, I applaud Glendale for their efforts and I hope to see a further crackdown on cyber-bullying in the future while protecting the rights of the average social media user.
Thomas Burleigh 