Online bullying, real harm that can kill

It was supposed to be a time to celebrate: Brittan Heller was about to graduate and headed to one of the most prestigious law programs in the United States. Then a classmate Heller did not reciprocate romantically was rejected at the same university and turned her anger on her.

He wrote a text titled “Stupid Whore Will Attend Yale Law School” and posted it on a site popular with anonymous trolls. The man encouraged them to do their worst against her.

Soon after, several strangers made derogatory and sexualized comments and posted photos of her online. They made threats. They revealed her personal information. At one point it was necessary for FBI agents to accompany her to classes to give her protection.

“People say, ‘Unplug. Do not read it. Turn off the computer,” said Heller, who turned her experience from 15 years ago into a legal specialty and is now an expert in combating online harassment.

“It is the 21st century and people have the right to use the internet for work, for pleasure and to express themselves. Telling people not to read comments is not enough. We don’t talk enough about this issue and we have to.”

Online bullying has become so common that it’s hard to imagine the internet without it. From cyberbullying against teens to authoritarian governments seeking to silence dissidents, online toxicity is a fact of life for everyone, but the most frequent targets are women, teens, and racial and religious minorities. And there is evidence that the problem is getting worse.

In 2014, 15% of Americans said they had experienced significant or serious online abuse, defined as stalking, physical threats, ongoing harassment, or sexual harassment. In 2021, that number was 25%, according to studies by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Health workers, journalists, teachers, police officers and government employees have reported an increase in online harassment in recent years, as the pandemic and political polarization prompted many to unleash their anger online.

Nearly three out of four female journalists reported receiving threats or other forms of harassment online, according to a survey by UNESCO and the International Center for Journalists, which interviewed more than 700 journalists from more than 100 countries. One in five said the harassment escalated to offline abuse and even assault.

The growth of the internet has expanded the ways in which people can be harassed beyond simple emails or messages on social networks, direct messages, text messages or streaming videos.

And with the popularity of cell phones and a ubiquitous and cheap internet, bullying can now be a 24-hour-a-day problem for victims.

“We’ve made a lot of progress — there’s more awareness now — but it’s easy to get exasperated and feel like we haven’t made any progress,” said Tina Meier, who created a foundation to educate children and their parents about online bullying, after the suicide. of his own daughter in 2006.

Mega Meier was 13 years old when someone she met online, who she thought was a boy named Josh, started harassing her online. The two had flirted until “Josh” turned on Megan. “Everyone hates you,” ‘Josh’ wrote. “The world would be a better place without you.”

Police later discovered that Josh was actually a woman: the mother of one of Megan’s classmates.

Although surveys show that all types of people are susceptible to online harassment, extensive studies have indicated that women and non-whites are much more targeted. This is also the case for people with disabilities, members of religious minorities, and the LGBTQ community.

Women are more likely to view online harassment as a serious problem compared to men, Pew found. They are also more likely to report being victims of cyberbullying and more serious abuse, such as threats of physical harm.

The difference is so great that many men may not understand the seriousness of the demeaning language, sexualized insults and unwanted attention that women often face online.

A campaign of coordinated harassment against female video game designers that began in 2014, called Gamergate, has become so ubiquitous — including threats of rape, torture and murder — that some women have hired security guards or kept out of public view.

Online bullying has also been used globally to target journalists, dissidents and others in the public sphere.

Political consultant María Cardona began receiving aggressive emails and direct messages once she began presenting her views on national news in the United States.

She notes that many of her critics bristled at the idea that an outspoken Hispanic woman could be considered an authority on political issues. A typical message read: “I hope you get raped and your throat cut.”

Cardona expressed: “They want to silence us, they want to scare us, they want to intimidate us.” Cardona is currently keeping her office under lock and key after someone showed up in person to attack her.

The anonymity that the internet can offer can make it easy to be cruel without real-world consequences. It’s a phenomenon known as the “online disinhibition” effect and one reason trolls feel comfortable saying things they’d never say to anyone in person.

As part of a negotiated settlement in Heller’s lawsuit against her harassers, she asked to meet them face-to-face. One of them was a 17-year-old boy who wrote that she wanted to gouge out Heller’s eyes and copulate with her corpse.

“They all admitted to essentially the same thing: that they didn’t realize their actions were affecting a person in that way, that they didn’t realize there was a person on the other side of the screen,” recalls Heller. “And then everyone was like, ‘I’m so sorry.'”

California enacted the first law in the United States against harassment on the web in 1999 and most states have followed suit, but implementing the rule can be difficult, as the differences between harassment and freedom of expression are sometimes blurred. . Police and prosecutors often lack sufficient training and resources.

Tech companies say they are getting better at identifying and stopping bullying. For example, Instagram — owned by Facebook parent company Meta — has made several changes aimed at reducing bullying, including placing warnings about potentially abusive language and making it easier to block or report bullies.

However, those steps have not been enough. Internal Facebook documents revealed by former employee Frances Haugen show that executives are aware of the potential for their products to be used to harass people. An internal study said 19% of teens said Instagram exacerbates suicidal thoughts and 17% say it worsens eating disorders.

“Bullying online is a problem for everyone, but I think it’s especially problematic for children,” said Matalie Bazarova, a Cornell University professor who specializes in the study of social media.

He added that a multifaceted approach is required to respond to the problem: laws to require minimum safeguards from big tech companies, technical innovations, and broad educational efforts, such as simulations that teach teens how to spot cyberbullying and how to use networks. harmlessly social.

Technical solutions would include automated systems that detect potentially harmful messages for cues of harassing language — capitalized words, repetitive phrases or certain keywords — or institute a short delay before users can respond to messages, giving them a chance to calm down.

Heller stressed that the internet, currently in its “awkward adolescence” stage, is not the first invention to change how human beings communicate.

“People said similar things about the telegraph, the telephone and television: that they were going to ruin society in some way,” he said. “Pedro, they were all regulated 25 years after they were launched: Those regulations did not kill the telephone, or television, or radio.”