Bullying can happen on and off campus, and on and offline. Schools must take disciplinary actions against any kind of bullying to protect students. According to the government resource StopBullying.gov, Illinois anti-bullying laws apply “if the behavior causes a substantial disruption to the educational process or orderly operation of a school, and if a school administrator or teacher receives a report that bullying through this means has occurred.”
What privacy rights do students have, online and in the classroom?
If their online behavior does not translate to harmful classroom conduct, students are allowed to use social media freely.
In 2021, the Supreme Court set a precedent for students’ online privacy rights and the regulation of free speech. A high school student posted hateful language about her school on Snapchat, but justices ruled that she was within her rights of free speech. Her post was made outside of school, and it also did not disrupt the learning environment for other students.
Students have a right for their personal social media passwords and accounts to be completely private and inaccessible to school administrators. By the State of Illinois Right to Privacy in the School Setting Act, it is illegal for post-secondary schools to request or require students to provide their social media account passwords.
It is legal, though, for schools to dictate students’ use of the Internet on technology owned by the school. Schools are also allowed to monitor students’ use of school accounts and technology.
As long as they are not demanding passwords or account access from students, anything that a student makes available to the public online is also available to school administators. If a student publicly posts content that is in violation of school rules (such as cyberbullying), then that content is permissible for investigation.
Can schools discipline kids for AI-generated content?
Artificial intelligence is impacting classroom life in many ways, which unfortunately includes bullying. After reports of students using AI to generate explicit and hurtful images of classmates, the State of Illinois issued House Bill 3851 to expand its definition of cyberbullying to include harmful images of students generated by AI. This definition amendment provides clarity to the amount of harm that AI creations can do, and it gives schools the power to intervene in relevant situations.
What measures are taken in the classroom to handle social media misconduct?
Online misbehavior that affects the classroom is treated like in-class misbehavior, and cyberbullying is treated like bullying in every disciplinary respect. It is up to the judgement of individual schools to determine specific disciplinary actions, when it is appropriate for those actions to be taken, by law.
Schools are also taking preventative measures to inform kids about harmful online behavior. Public Act 102-0055 requires Illinois high schools to provide students with at least one unit of media literacy instruction. Education is the first step towards making sure that incidents involving the misuse of social media are avoided in the first place.
