Don't Roll Your Eyes At This Post, Or You Might Violate An Anti-Bullying Law
from the getting-out-of-hand dept
We've been covering the moral panic going around concerning "online bullying" for sometime. Despite lots of fear mongering, there is little to no evidence that online bullying is really a huge thing. Does it happen? Sure. There's no way to stop bullying. The problem is that in these moral panics, you get absolutely ridiculous legal proposals, like the one from some state Senators in NY who flat out admitted that perhaps we've got too much free speech. Among the things they considered to be bullying? Online trolling and flaming. Yeah, perhaps we should outlaw our comment section. Oh yeah, they also said excluding someone from a group was bullying.Oh, and don't roll your eyes at that. As a few folks have sent in, proponents of anti-bullying laws define eye-rolling as bullying. No, we're not joking. So, you know, if the big kid in school demands your money, and you roll your eyes back at him... I guess everyone's on equal footing, huh?
The link above notes various attempts to create more anti-bullying laws and regulations, many of which raise significant free speech questions. It also points out that the Justice Department's own data has noted that bullying and violence in schools continues to drop. Combined with the studies we've seen about the limited amount of online bullying... it suggests this is not a widespread issue. Again, none of this is to deny that bullying does exist, and that it can be horrifying for the victims. But that doesn't mean we should rush out and shut down the First Amendment with overreactions. Deal with the extreme cases -- that makes sense. In most cases, the really extreme cases can already be dealt with under existing law. But when you get to the point that you're defining bullying as "eye rolling" or "excluding," you're actually doing the opposite. You're diluting the problem so much in an attempt to make it seem bigger than it really is, that you make it impossible for people to focus on the real problem cases.
Filed Under: anti-bullying, bullying, eye rolls, free speech