Cyberbullying Should Be Criminalized

As a final point, cyberbullying should be criminalized because criminalizing will act as a deterrent to future bullies and of the way its non-criminalized statute impacts the bullies. First, people who cyberbully others are rarely ever sued, much less charged with a crime. Here is a scenario, there is a child who is about to cyberbully someone. This child knows that it is very unlikely that they will get in trouble with law for this because it is not illegal and cyberbullying is usually not reported anyways, so the child proceeds with the act of cyberbullying. Now, same scenario, but this time cyberbullying is criminalized. That same child will know have to think about how they could get jail time because cyberbullying is illegal, so the child decides to not
Next, criminalizing cyberbullying will reduce the current mindset around cyberbully, which is that if it is legal, than it is ok. In his study, American lawyer and author Glenn Greenwald found that not criminalizing something acts as an incentive for others to commit it (Greenwald link). This study can be applied to cyberbullying in Canada. As stated above, if cyberbullying is criminalized, than more people would be deterred from doing it. On the other hand, if cyberbullying is not criminalized, as it is now, cyberbullying is more likely to happen. The bullies see cyberbullying as not wrong because it is not illegal, and when they see case after case of bullies being tried in civil and criminal court and getting off, they start to feel a sense of invincibility, which they then use to turn around and cyberbully people. Since cyberbullying in its current state of un-criminalization acts as an incentive to do it, and if it is criminalized it would act as a deterrent, cyberbullying should be criminalized under the Canadian Criminal