Ohio House Bill 116 was made into law Thursday, February 2, 2012.
The law requires every school in Ohio to put a cyber-bullying policy into place. Goals include teaching students not to engage in cyber-bullying, training teachers on how to handle cyber-bullying and holding parents more accountable for their children’s online actions. Besides the obvious goal that is prevention of cyber-bullying, the law aims to raise awareness of an increasingly wide-spread and dangerous problem threatening today’s youth.
What will come as a result of this law? Will more and more states begin to walk in Ohio’s footsteps? Will any resulting laws be similar or are there inherent flaws in Ohio’s law that must be ironed out? Quite possibly the most interesting part of this law is the responsibility falling into the hands of the parents. This raises many questions. If a child is old enough to use the internet, aren’t they old enough to be held accountable for their own actions and speech? In the same vein, when are children old enough to begin using the internet and how closely should they be monitored? Though bullying is clearly a problem, does this not slightly impede of freedom of speech? Some may think that laws such as this are unnecessary and default to the popular mentality that “kids will be kids”. Still yet, aren’t preventative measures better than any alternative?
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