“David’s Law is named after David Molak, a 16-year-old student, who committed suicide in San Antonio, Texas, due to cyberbullying. Senator Jose Menendez and Representative Ina Minjarez called upon the Texas legislature to push for anti-cyberbullying laws in the state of Texas in honor of David Molak and Matt Vasquez, who was also encouraged to kill himself over social media harassment and cyberbullying”. Anybody who was told or harassed to harm themselves or anything to that extent should definitely report that to the authority because the authority can get involved and charge the person for trying to convince someone to harm themselves and such.
David’s Law was created to enable school leaders and law enforcement to stop cyberbullying and to allow students to be rehabilitated. Schools and law enforcement need to be civilized with everyone around because people need to go to the authority to protect them at all costs and schools should make it known that kids can go to them or parents or adults to help them with their situation. Law and schools always want to make sure kids can go back to the way they were before the situation happened or cope with the situation for future times as well.
David’s Law gives schools responsibilities for awareness and new cyberbullying policies. It also classifies cyberbullying as a misdemeanor of class A and allows the law enforcement authorities to issue summonses to detect anonymous names and identities online. All public schools require online intervention and investigation when the use of tips, investigations, and/or allegations is suspected of cyber-bullying. If parents of students are aware of the situation and do not act, they are also held responsible. When something happens online and the school becomes aware, school leaders must intervene, even after hours or after school. The aim is to prevent online harassment or cyberbullying from cyberbullying and/or teen suicide. Parents should not be accountable for things that are taken or done at school or on school grounds, parents are accountable for what happens outside of the school grounds. Parents need to make sure their kids are healthy and making healthy choices. Kids also need to be open with their parents about situations like these and not lie to protect themselves as well, because some kids will lie to try and get out of a situation that they caused too. Schools are supposed to prevent these things with the resources they have, assemblies, posters, cyberbullying awareness week, etc.
However, the enforcement of this law will have unforeseeable consequences on young people in Texas who under the David Law are reprimanded or prosecuted. In particular, the law feeds the pipeline from school to prisons by sending students to the system of criminal justice. The Legislature adopted the law to address the growing problem of bullying-related suicides and thought little about the consequences. Although in some cases criminalization is appropriate, it certainly is not the answer to each student. All kids should know David’s Law just to show how serious this issue is and hopefully, it prevents more than suicide but prevents cyberbullying in general for all safety of kids and parents.
“The students who cyberbullied David Molak would have faced consequences of differing degrees under David’s Law depending on each student’s respective involvement in the bullying. Each student who participated in the harmful communication directed at David, even if just once, would clearly be categorized as a bully under the new definition because the off-campus communication had the effect not only of physically harming David (as considered in the Michelle Carter hypothetical) but the cyberbullying also interfered with David’s educational opportunities”. Most of the time, when children are bullying each other, they do not realize the effect that they had on the person until it is too late and the person they were bullying ends up taking their life. If it comes down to the person taking their life due to them not being able to handle it anymore, the bully/bullies should be the maximum punishment they can get without being too harsh.
Cyberbullying initiatives are enforced through the frameworks for self-regulating social media companies to address on their sites. The frameworks that cover reporting instruments, software blocking, and filters, geofencing, human or automated measurement systems such as supervised computer education and educational anti-bullying content. Every program and every social media should have some sort of regulator mechanism to prevent cyberbullying and to prevent harassment or any such offense. They are usually in their own section of policies so that people cannot miss the memo about what can happen if they do what they are not supposed to do. Reporting and blocking are the most common tools used in every media there is to this day.
Although the official rules of social media platforms tend to be written down on their pages, these rules do not necessarily clarify how bullying methods operate. Social media platforms are online intermediaries that provide content created by the user and allow user interactivity and direct interaction with users. Some companies do explain how the mechanism works and some do not because of the secrecy of making sure people behave on their site or program. While companies do make these known, they do not want people to think they have no privacy at all while using their site or program.
The businesses must first determine to act on cyber bullying content that the content is cyberbullying and violates company policies. The research-based definitions of cyber-bullying usually require 'repeated' behavior. In view of various technological advantages, what does a platform count as repetitive? Is only one medium post appropriate to count as cyberbullying? Twitter, for example, wants you to report either one post or comment and why it is being reported, but you can also include more than one post or comment to back up why you are reporting the person and blocking them. Social media wants evidence of more occurrence to make sure their suspension or ban is justifiable.
In conclusion, with everything going on in every decade, technology is getting bigger by the second. These are the multiple ways and multiple actions that can be taken with the resources that are given to all schools and law enforcement to make sure they all prevent cyberbullying and bullying in schools and outside of schools, and how to make sure kids are raised to not harm anyone and to talk to somebody about their problems to help make their life better or more peaceful and not going down the wrong path.
