When I was 16, a school administrator followed me into a gymnasium supply closet and, leaning in, told me he had been having X-rated dreams about me. I backed out quickly, saying nothing. Sitting in my car afterward, feeling physically sick, I opened Facebook for help.
The comment was not unprecedented, though I always laughed off his remarks on my flimsy gym outfits, my weight, my haircuts. Only in retrospect could I see the subtle escalation of his advances as what I believe was an attempt at grooming.
Not knowing what to do, I turned to social media to air my discomfort. Social media figured prominently into the subsequent fallout from the incident, which involved appropriate discipline. That discipline provoked other students to send me threatening Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter messages.
Most importantly, though, social media enabled this incident to maintain a longevity that is nearly impossible to guard against in the digital age. Even the most stringent privacy settings provide the prospect of indefinite harassment, revealing nominal, but usable, personal information. Long after in-person harassment occurs, this information can be manipulated by offenders to, at the very least, retraumatize victims through digital harassment, and at the very worst, threaten their safety.
In a report released in early July, Pew Research revealed that 41 percent of American adults have personally experienced online harassment. Respondents overwhelmingly desired more to be done to protect them online, with 79 percent of respondents stating that social media companies had a responsibility to step in when harassment occurs. Additionally, 49 percent of respondents believed law enforcement should play a "significant role" in addressing online harassment.
Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court ruled that access to social media is a basic right for sex offenders, proving just how messy this arena is to adjudicate and for law enforcement to address. In striking down a North Carolina law, the court placed the onus on social media companies to design built-in features for blocking, reporting, and obscuring information to protect users from digital sexual harassment.
In the decision, Justice Elena Kagan wrote: "Increasingly, [social media] is the way people get ... all information." She added, "This is the way people structure their civic community life." She's right--social media is how that former administrator found my email and contacted me to let me know he had been following my academic trajectory in college.
Perturbed by the contact, I realized there was nothing I could do legally to keep him from following my digital paper trail. I tried to forget about it until he reappeared recently, making a shell profile on a social media platform for the express purpose of following me. The corresponding notification sent an implicit message: I'm still tracking you.
My experience illuminates the new social contract we have entered into as Internet users. We surrender our profile pictures, our email addresses, and our witty bios to sovereign social media platforms, seeking full citizenship in the digital era. In return, we can only hope that these private companies will protect us, and our right to live free from harassment.
While some states like California, Illinois, and Massachusetts have codified law regarding Internet harassment, the threshold for opening a case against a harasser remains high, and costly. What remains problematic is that people like me facing benign, but still traumatic, harassment are forced to accept their lack of privacy as an unfortunate externality of living online.
This is because social media platforms, in their own self-interest, make personal security an opt-in feature. Platforms like Instagram and Twitter make public profiles the default mode. This provides users more content to surf, boosting engagement and ad revenue. Additionally, there is no way to opt out of public searchability, forcing users to change their Facebook names if they don't want to be easily found. And if unwelcome friend, follow, or message requests come, harassment can be reported and users can be blocked retroactively. But the emotional trauma, that disconcerting sense of always being tracked, can't be avoided.
The other night, while out with friends, we leaned over a phone and laughed at the Bitmojis on Snapchat's new map feature where users can turn themselves into cartoons and share their location, down to the exact building, anywhere on the globe.
"Seriously, turn on Ghost Mode!" I said; an opt-in setting. "Why would you want everyone to know where you are?" My friend rolled her eyes in reply. "At this point, I just expect anyone who really wanted to know where I am to be able to find me somehow. It's unavoidable."
Philosopher Thomas Hobbes described man's life outside of the social contract as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"--a sentiment many would use to describe life without social media. Unfortunately, the cost of living in this digital society is our sense of privacy, a tax paid by all Internet users. But victims of in-person harassment are digital citizens in the highest income bracket--carrying the greatest burden with the most to lose.
Raised in Arkansas, Lauren Jackson is a freelance journalist and recent graduate of the University of Virginia. She will be attending Oxford University in the fall.
Editorial on 07/23/2017