In a world where the internet and social media platforms play remarkable roles in our daily lives, particularly those of young students, certain rather disquieting trends are evolving. One such injurious trend is the widespread occurrence of ‘digital hazing’.
Hazing, a once clandestine ritual performed behind closed doors, conditional for membership into a group or community, has found an unnerving podium on the bristling boulevard of social media. Websites such as YouTube and Snapchat now host distressing videos that undrapedly display these aberrant ‘rites of passage’ for young learners. This has untied the veil over an alarming digital menace that predicates upon the vulnerability of the youth. This information is shared in a report by the law firm Kohrman Jackson & Krantz LLP.
While hazing is comprised of a spectrum of behaviours, what characterizes these acts is their potential to engender harm – physical or psychological, to the victim. It engenders an environment of fear and intimidation, often with menacing threats of social or even academic exclusion, should compliance be absent. Hazing in all forms disagreeably challenges the entitlement to safety and security in academic settings, but when it sprawls across the vastness of the digital realm, the impact and resultant harm could be exponentially profound.
The synthesis of hazing and the digital world, colloquially termed ‘digital hazing’, is an emerging legal quagmire. With the concept of hazing now freely traversing the borders of physical space and stepping firmly into the digital sphere, the legal terrain becomes treacherously intricate. Governing bodies, schools, and legal professionals alike must be watchful, proactively combatting these egregious activities that maliciously leverage the pervasive nature of digital platforms.
While the law encompasses regulations against hazing, with some jurisdictions even recognizing it as a criminal act, the adaptation of hazing to the cyber world calls for an inevitable expansion and evolution of legal frameworks. In this perspective, the task ahead for legal professionals is not only to have a clinching grasp over these evolving digital challenges but also to instigate mechanisms that effectively attend to and mitigate the harms of digital hazing.