Myspace Hoax

Headliner: “MySpace Hoax Leads to 13-year-old Girl’s Suicide” We all know how hard it can be to be a teenager. Some have lived it and gotten over it, some haven’t. Megan Meier was a 13-year-old who had battled attention deficit disorder, depression and a weight problem for much of her young life. She meets a guy on the ever popular MySpace website and is all caught up in the mad rush of physical and mental emotions. Little did she know that her next-door neighbors were behind a cruel prank to humiliate and embarrass this teenager. Lori Drew was the 49-year-old woman who thought up the whole idea with her daughter and personal assistant. What was the reason? The two young girls were friends who had a falling out so Lori invented a 16-year-old boy, “Josh Evans,” and created a MySpace account for him, and made Megan believe he was new in town and thought she was cool. And then the boy turned on Megan, saying that the world would be better off without her and in the end, Megan took her own life. The whole point was to start a fake account and flirt with Megan then dump her. And then they would post bulletins so that her classmates would see and make fun of her for it. When Tina Meier, Megan’s mother, found out this information, they immediately wanted to press charges. I think that if an adult who personally knew the girl and knew she had problems and still proceeded with the taunting, needs to be punished. The trial had to be taken to California since the network was based in that state. Prosecutors argued that Drew violated the MySpace laws of starting a fake account along with other charges. But since there is no real criminal charge for Megan’s death, the case was dismissed. One of the problems was that FBI was unable to retrieve the messages from the day of Megan’s death including the message that only her father saw. I agree with the Meiers when they say that a law should be changed, state or federal, so that what happened to Megan - at the hands of an adult - is a crime.