The fight against cyberbullying has gotten off track

After the suicide of Rebecca Sedwick, a 12-year-old girl from Florida who was bombarded with vicious texts like "Why are you still alive?" and "drink bleach and die," there's a visceral desire to punish the people behind those hurtful words.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd did just that this week, saying he decided to file felony charges against two of her peers, ages 12 and 14, when he realized that the alleged tormentors still had access to social media. The 14-year-old allegedly posted, "Yes ik [I know] I bullied Rebecca nd she killed her self but IDGAF [I don't give a fuck]" followed by a heart.

This is understandably infuriating. However, while Judd's actions may stop these girls from bullying anyone else, there is little evidence that the arrests will create any larger deterrent.

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Despite the significant attention and legislation devoted to cyberbullying (49 states have laws on record) since the suicide of a Rutgers freshman in 2010, harassers haven't been deterred. Following the Steubenville rape trial, two girls in the town, ages 15 and 16, were arrested for aggravated menacing after they threatened the victim with physical harm via Twitter and Facebook. This summer, two Connecticut high school students were arrested for creating fake Twitter accounts to harass fellow students with sexually explicitly and homophobic tweets. The list goes on.

As they stand, anti-cyberbullying laws just don't appear up to the challenge. As many as 15 girls may have been involved in bullying Sedwick, so how did Judd decide to arrest just two and not all of them? Moreover, as Amanda Paulson at the Christian Science Monitor notes, "The girls in this case face third-degree felony charges that are completely separate from bullying statutes." If existing cyberbullying laws are ineffectual, should new laws be created?

Probably not, as criminalizing cyberbullying might even be exacerbating the problem.

Some experts worry about the message being sent to bullying victims. By focusing on cyberbullying as the direct cause of suicide in these criminal charges, at-risk adolescents may internalize that suicide is the normal or expected reaction to being bullied. Paulson writes that "this message can encourage young people to use 'you should kill yourself' as a bullying technique," which "in turn leads some teens to believe suicide is an appropriate response."

But if laws and media attention aren't doing the trick, what's the answer for combating cyberbullying?

As with most issues involving adolescents, parents and schools need to be more involved. Part of the reason the two girls in Florida were arrested was because their parents refused to cooperate and work with police in monitoring their daughters' social media activity.

And since most cases give schools, not law enforcement, the authority to intervene in cyberbullying, schools need to take the responsibility more seriously. Nancy Willard, director of Embrace Civility in the Digital age, a cyberbullying advocacy group, said a 2010 study showed that only 42 percent of students who endured moderate to serve bullying reported it to their schools, and, worse, just 34 percent of them said things got better afterwards. "What grade would we give a student if they took a test with 100 questions, only answered 42, and only got 14 correct?" Willard told the Christian Science Monitor. "That's the level of effectiveness we are at in bullying prevention."

The complex web of bullying, mental health, and social media produces a new realm of harassment beyond the pale of previous childhood bullying, and we're not yet adequately prepared to cope with it. Expressing a sentiment that transcends the death of Rebecca Sedwick, Eddie Owen, the pastor at her funeral said "Something like this cuts our legs out from under us. We've got more questions than answers."