Megan Meier hanged herself after being hoaxed and harassed on the popular social network site MySpace. (wiki article) But this wasn’t your typical teen vs. teen angst type thing. The mother of the girl who had been Megan’s best friend up until that point has been charged for having a significant role in her death, because SHE (not the daughter) reportedly created a fake MySpace account pretending to be a boy who liked Megan, and then later turned it around and she wrote the cruel words, “the world would be a better place without you,” that may have pushed Megan over the edge and it resulted in her taking her own life.

I think this is setting a precedent that should’ve been set a long time ago, personally. In this case, it’s really about the loss of the life of a teenager, which is probably the most extreme end result in cyber-bullying. However, we’ve seen bloggers shut down their sites, move to another state, or completely go offline because of other adults. And until now, no one’s been held responsible for this kind of behavior.

The problem in this case? The mother was never charged in regards to the death (neither were her daughter or her daughter’s friend who has now felt the need to take on the responsibility for this to the point of attempting suicide herself), but MySpace has filed charges against her for violating the sites Terms of Service.

I get it all the time on one of my personal blogs. People who feel like they can use the so-called anonymity of the internet to say things to me they don’t have the guts to say to my face. The truth of the matter is that if I wanted to, I could take the IP addresses they left behind and find out who they are. Fortunately for me, I haven’t been harassed to the point where I’m in fear for my life, but I’ve traced IP addresses back to junior high and high schools, which really gets me. Why are these kids so hell-bent on being hurtful to strangers, much less to people they once considered friends? And in this case, WHY would an adult, a mother, perpetuate this kind of behavior?

Parents are supposed to be responsible for their kids’ actions. Not be acting like children themselves, and surely not harassing children. It’s kind of frightening if you ask me. I hope this woman gets some kind of jail time to be honest. She should be put away for as many years as Megan lived.

What do you think?

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