In the 21st century, adolescents have to deal with something that was never a problem before. Cyber bullying is something that has recently arisen and recently become a big issue. According to Google.com, cyber bullying can be defined as "the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature." Today's public schools are having difficulties deciding whether or not the punishment of cyber bullying should be the Department Of Education's responsibility. Although most cyber bullying cases do not happen during school hours, the reality is that cyber bullying affects a school's functionality by distracting students and disturbing their learning. According to the supreme court cases of Tinker V. Des Moines and Morse V. Fredrick, schools are allowed to determine the appropriateness of speech and the students' freedom of speech cannot infringe on the rights of other students' and cannot disrupt the daily operations of a school. .
In Landmark Cases of the Supreme Court of the United States Streetlaw.org's article "Student Speech, Symbolic Speech", the Supreme Court Case of Tinker V. Des Moines, John Tinker, his sister, and a friend were sent home from school for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. The school had prohibited the usage of armbands protesting the Vietnam War. Their fathers sued, but the Supreme Court ruled against them. The school was only protecting the rights of other students and preventing the disruption of daily school operations. Cyber bullying, in the worst case scenario can end in suicide or depression, which ruins – and ends a teenager's life before it can even get started. The Tinker V. Des Moines case aided in future occurrences, which have infringed of the rights of students and disrupted school operations. Regardless of where or when the cyber bullying occurred, the reality of any situation is that the topics of conversations student's have will shift from intellectually influenced to gossip related to cyber bullying.
