Legal Pitfalls Of Social Media Regulation: A Comparative Analysis Of Cyberbullying Laws In Kenya, Canada And United States Of America

Abstract

Despite legislators’ efforts to enact new laws to criminalize cyber-bullying, the laws seem prone to overreach in ways that offend constitutionally protected freedom of expression. The critical constitutional flaw in much of the new cyber-bullying legislation's is that, in its attempt to define cyber-bullying, it conflates the definition of cyber-bullying as a social problem with the legal definition of cyber-bullying as a crime, leading to laws that violate constitutions.