Around the country, more and more of our young people are falling victim to cyber bullying – the use of electronic devices such as an Internet-connected computers to bully, harass, intimidate or humiliate another individual. But where is all of this online cyber bullying taking place? The following list provides insight into the sites most commonly being used for cyber bullying as well as why and how this problem is occurring.

MySpace Cyber Bullying

MySpace is the number one social networking site for high school age students and younger. How popular is MySpace? Rupert Murdoch bought the company $580 millions dollars just a few short years ago and now the company’s value is several times that already huge figure.

Most kids use MySpace to set up profiles and share information about themselves, their favorite music, Hollywood stars and other interests with kids in their school or neighborhood. For most, MySpace represents a fun form of self-expression that utilizes the latest online technology.

But a small percentage of kids use MySpace for cyber bullying. This can be accomplished in several different ways, including:

• Posting hateful information on another person’s MySpace page.
• Posting hateful information about another person on your own MySpace page
• Creating a new MySpace profile for the sole purpose of bullying another individual.

However it is executed, cyber bullying on MySpace remains a significant problem. While many chalk it up to “kids being kids”, more and more are starting to realize that a nasty post on someone’s MySpace page is as bad or worse that a taunt yelled across the schoolyard.

Facebook Cyber Bullying

Facebook is similar to MySpace except that it is geared towards a slightly older audience (the music and customization functionality is a lot less robust than found on MySpace) but is still being used by cyber bullies to harass their classmates and ex-friends. The rules of engagement are similar to those found in MySpace: people will either use their own profile to harass others, or create fake identities and build profiles to harass other people or dupe them into thinking another person is interested in them (romantically or as a friend).

Twitter Cyber Bullying

One of the fastest growing social media enterprises, Twitter allows people to “follow” one another by posting regular updates about their activities. Twitter is seeing a growing number of cyber bullying incidents as more and more kids figure out how to post hateful, harassing information about their friends and deliver it “via Tweet” to as many followers of the site as they can.

Website Cyber Bullying

In the most extreme cases of cyber bullying, many kids are going to the trouble of building entire websites from scratch in order to use them to humiliate another individual. A common method for doing this is to buy a URL from godaddy.com that humiliates the target (such as www.lisaisugly.com) then fill it with unkind postings and photos (Photoshopping a person into uncompromising positions is a highly used form of cyber bullying) then spreading word about the site to others via email, social networking, etc.

Currently, cyber bullying is one of the fastest growing problems facing school administrators and local governments around the country. Cyber bullying is defined as using the computer or other electronic devices to intimidate, threaten or humiliate another individual. Cyber bullying most commonly takes place on the Internet among students from a given school or neighborhood.

What follows is a series of highly publicized cases of Cyber bullying – each one chosen to shed light on the nature of the problem and the fallout that ensues when one young individual uses technology to hurt another person psychologically.

The Megan Meier MySpace Incident

Megan Meier was a 13 year old from Missouri who struck up an online friendship on the popular social networking site MySpace with a person she believed was a new boy in her hometown. In actuality, the “friend” was a group of individuals, including adults, who were intent on humiliating the poor girl because of a friendship with another child that had gone awry. Megan was very upset when she found out the truth, then later committed suicide once the friendship had terminated. The horrifying case stunned the community and caused state government officials to pass some of the harshest cyber bullying laws in the country.

The “Kill Kylie” Campaign of Hate and Homophobia

Kylie Kenney, an eighth grade student from Vermont lost two years of her life as a result of cyber bullying from classmates. From junior high through her sophomore year of high school, Kylie was forced to deal with websites created by her classmates that featured names like “Kill Kylie Incorporated” that were filled with threatening, homophobic remarks about the young girl. These hurtful kids obtained screen names with handles close to Kylie’s name and used them to make suggestive remarks and sexual advances on Kylie’s teammates on the field hockey team. As a result police filed charges of harassments against the individuals responsible.

The “Dog Poop Girl”

In South Korea, a female college student was riding the train with her dog when it defecated on the floor of the subway car. After the girl refused to clean up the mess, another passenger on the train took her picture using her cell phone and posted it online. In the months to follow, it became an Internet sensation in South Korea and “Dog Poop” girl became the target of extreme harassment. Individuals found out her name and address and soon she was forced to withdraw from school and move to another part of the country.

A Fake Facebook Rival

This year in Clinton Missouri, charges were filed against a teenager who allegedly created a fake Facebook account to serve as a competition against a young girl who was interested romantically in a male student. The account was created by another girl who wanted the boy all to herself, the suit claims. As a result, the targeted individual underwent significant levels of stress which affected her studies and her ability to attend school regularly. The case is one of many that feature phony accounts on Facebook or MySpace that are used to harass young people or stir up trouble among friends.

Cyber Bullying has become a worldwide problem because of the difficulty to track its occurrences. It some cases it has been accepted as humor, but when is it taken to far? When a child has taken her own life because she was cyber bullied, we know it has been taken way too far.

Cyber bullying has been present in the 2008 presidential election with the slurrying of both presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama. Even the vice-presidential candidates Sarah Palin and Joe Biden have been victims of this abuse. These slanders wouldn’t technically be considered cyber bullying, but are loosely related. Senator Sarah Palin has received the worst of it with the creation of videos mocking her interviews on Saturday Night Live. NBC reports over 7 million views online, with millions more watching it on YouTube and Google video.

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Recently, a number of states have passed strong cyber bullying laws that are designed to protect children from being harassed, threatened and humiliated online. These laws represent a crucial step towards National anti-cyber bullying laws which will protect children of all ages in every corner of the country.

Here is a state-by-state look at some of these laws:

Arkansas
In 2007, the Arkansas legislation passed a law allowing school officials to take action against cyber bullies even if the bullying did not originate or take place on school property. The law gave school administrators much more freedom to punish those individuals who sought to harass their fellow students.

Idaho
2006 saw Idaho lawmakers pass a law that allowed school officials to suspend students if they bullied or harassed other students using a telephone or computer.

Iowa
Iowa has passed several laws that force schools to create anti-cyber bullying policies which cover bullying “in schools, on school property or at any school function or school-sponsored activity.”

New Jersey
The Garden State of New Jersey has always maintained tough laws about bullying, but it wasn’t until 2007 that the laws were amended to include bullying via “electronic communication.” These laws give additional power to the school system to enforce bullying-related punishment for actions that may not take place while on school grounds.

Oregon
The progressive state of Oregon really delves into the details of cyber bullying. The laws passed in recent years in Oregon expand the boundaries of what constitutes cyber bullying to include those actions which “substantially interfere” with the education of the young person.

Missouri
The suicide of a 13-year old girl Megan Meier who was the victim of an internet hoax greatly raised the awareness of cyber bullying and its consequences in the state of Missouri. Governor Matt Blunt went so far as to create a task force whose sole purpose was to study and create laws regarding cyber bullying. As a result the Internet Harassment Task Force now stands as a shining example for other states around the country. Missouri has also toughened their laws on the matter, upgrading cyber-harassment from a misdemeanor to a Class D felony.

New York
New York created a system to investigate claims of cyber bullying that would help police and school officials better ascertain the circumstances of each occurrence and prosecute or punish the culprits to the fullest extent of the law.

Rhode Island
The governor of Rhode Island is currently trying to pass a bill that would force repeat cyber bullying offenders to appear in family court, where they would be charged as delinquents under the terms of the state’s laws for young offenders.

Vermont
Vermont has added a $500 fine for cyber bullying offenses to their already stringent laws on the matter. There is currently a bill being discussed that would increase the reach of the school’s powers regarding cyber bullying when the action puts the individual’s ability to learn (or health and safety) at risk.