Are there penalties for cyberbullying?

Cyberbullying involves using electronic devices such as laptops, computers, tablets and mobile phones to reach social networks, websites, text messages and chat rooms where the perpetrator can attack the victim. The most common methods of cyberbullying include

– Persuasive or abusive emails and threatening text messages

– Using social media to disseminate gossip

– Publishing shameful photos or videos of the victim

– Creating false profiles to publish untrue or hurtful information

Cyberbullying is a psychological aggression, intentional and repeated over time, carried out by one or more people against others, using new technologies.

The number of victims of this type of harassment is exponentially increasing. Some studies revealed that around 2.9% of young people claim to have acted as a bully, while 5.9% claim to have been victims of cyberbullying”. In addition, 26.6% of adolescents practice or suffer cyberbullying” and among the victims, 50% know their aggressors”.

These cases are unfortunately more common than we think, but are there penalties that respond to this type of abuse?

The answer is “yes”, and the harasser is not the only one penalized as the “bystanders”, if any, can be prosecuted and duly punished for having knowledge of these types of crimes and not reporting them.

Bystanders can be active if they encourage and support the aggressor by reinforcing the harassment, or, passive if they are knowledgeable and observe the harassment, but do not intervene to stop it. In fact, research on cyberbullying has shown that aggressions decrease and even disappear, when bystanders openly show their disgust for bullying, denouncing, and supporting the victim.

That is, when prevention and dialogue fail to solve the problems of cyberbullying, those affected can file a criminal complaint for crimes of “threats and coercion” or crimes of “libel and slander”. This entails legal consequences such as a police record, internment in a juvenile center and fines for aggressors up to 16 years of age. While harassers between 16 and 18 years old can even be punished with prison sentences of up to three years, restraining orders and financial penalties.

Therefore, we can affirm the importance of abolishing the passive attitude of bystanders to cyberbullying since, as we have seen, it is a key aspect of preventing this type of bullying. It is also crucially important to gather evidence to prove the abuse in order to be able to stop and denounce this harassment in a radical way.

Finally, it is necessary to remember that education remains the basis for the prevention of this type of abuse known as cyberbullying.