Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act

Cyberbullying is seen by a portion of our United States Congress as the internet equivalent of actual physical assault against another person. In the Megan Meier Cyberbullying prevention act, they found that “ electronic communications provide anonymity to the perpetrator and the potential for widespread public distribution, potentially making them severely dangerous and cruel to youth”. This makes logical sense, as it points out the harms cyberbullying could do, as well as making the point it should be stopped. However, the equal and nearly opposite point could be made that cyberbullying is not an extension of bullying, rather a misconception of a deeper underlying problem: that bullying in itself is the actual problem, and it needs to be stopped, and cyberbullying can be solved by just turning off the device you are using.

have internet access from their parents. They list this as a finding of their research as to why their act should be passed, but it is really just a fallacy. Boiled down to its core, it is confusion between correlation and causation. It’s comparable to a rear-end crash: I’m the one that hit you, so the fault should be on me, correct? Not if you’re the one that stopped on a dime in the middle of the intersection. Frankly and abrasively, it’s a wonder why they left many of their “findings” in this argument, as they merely only correlate with the