In June of 2006, a thirteen year old Missouri girl named Megan Meier got a message from a boy named Josh Evans on her MySpace page. The two sent messages back and forth for about a month as they exchanged information and got to know each other better. Then suddenly, the relationship changed. Josh told Megan that he didn’t want to speak to her again because she was mean to her friends and that “the world would be better off without” her. The next day she was dead, having hung herself in her closet. In actuality, there was no Josh. He was the invention of an embittered former friend and her mother, Lori Drew.
The legal and social ramifications of such a case can not be understated. The Saint Charles County prosecutor could not find any laws on the books to even charge Ms. Drew. However, nearly two years later a Federal grand jury indicted the mother with conspiracy and accessing protected computers without authorization. This was the first conviction of its kind. Since the invention of social networking sites, there has been ambiguity of what is legal and what crosses the line to harassment. In the history of human society, the concept of online personas is a relatively new idea. This case study brought up many questions.
How responsible is the mother in the girl’s suicide? Should it be a factor that the girl was undergoing treatment for depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder?
How much of the blame rests upon Megan’s mother who did not monitor her daughter, and allowed her to join such a social networking site with a minimum age of fourteen?
Society often sets norms at a slower pace than technology advances, but in this case, a line in the sand has been drawn and those who manipulate others into doing bad things over the internet are guilty, in a similar way that Charles Manson is guilty of convincing others to do heinous acts without actually doing them himself. Society has stated that the internet, like the outside world is not a consequence free land ruled by anarchy, and it needs rules and regulations too.
Sources: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312018,00.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24652422/
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