Harassment in cyberspace

One of the most striking features of the online environment is our increased connectivity. The social networking site ‘Facebook’ alone has approximately 1.35 billion monthly active users, while mobile telephony is accessible to approximately 96 per cent of the world's population. We may send and receive messages via a range of platforms at any time of the day or night. Pauses in our days are often filled with checking social networking sites. For young people in particular, the so-called ‘digital natives’, online connectivity is fundamental to their social interactions; they have known nothing else.

While undoubtedly positive, this increased connectedness also facilitates conduct that may broadly be described as ‘harassment’; that is, ‘a pattern of behaviour or course of conduct pursued by an individual designed to intimidate and distress another individual’. Although the use of technology in this context is not new, with silent telephone calls being a well-established form of harassment, digital technology not only provides new ways of harassing, it may also help to overcome traditional obstacles to offending, both physical and psychological.

Modern communications provide both immediacy and distance, which can be a potent combination in facilitating offensive and harassing behaviour. ‘[W]riting in haste and regretting at leisure seems to be a by-product of the technology, unlike the situation, in times gone by, where communications were conducted in a more leisurely and deliberate way and there was necessarily time, before posting a letter, to reflect and tear it up once commonsense had reasserted control.’ They also provide a direct line of communication to the victim in ways that would be far more difficult to replicate in the offline environment. Social networking sites, in particular, provide ready access not only to the victim, but to their friends, family and other associates. For example, in Agostino v. Cleaves, shortly after commencing a relationship with the defendant's former girlfriend, the victim received threatening messages on his Facebook page sent by the defendant. Messages were also posted on the victim's brother's girlfriend's page, and the defendant posted images of himself holding a pistol on his personal page.

The relative anonymity of the internet can cause a loss of social inhibitions and constraints, thereby emboldening offenders to act. A person who would not contemplate confronting their victim personally may feel no hesitation in sending threatening messages via email, SMS, or IM.