The long and the short of it: If your kids are fond of using emojis, then they can get arrested.
The Lowdown
A twelve-year-old girl from Fairfax, Va., has been facing criminal charges for the use of bomb, gun and knife emojis on her Instagram account.
The aforementioned caption was shared by the Washington post.
Just after the girl shared this Instagram post, it caught attention of the school authorities, who then requested resource officer to investigate the IP address of the user. This led to the inquisition of a tween, who admitted posting the offending post with emojis, using the identity of another student. She did this using the lab computer at her school, but was eventually caught and charged with computer harassment and threatening the school.
However, the threat was finally considered “not credible enough”, according to a Fairfax County School’s spokesperson.
The reason behind the post is still under the cloche, but her mother believes that she shared the post in response to the bullying at school.
The kid had a good reputation and her mother told the Washington Post that “she wasn’t the kid who gets in trouble”. The mother was adamant that there is no reason to put charges on her daughter.
Having no precedents of such charges, the case was left to the prosecutors’ and judges’ discretion to decide whether the emojis were a real threat or not.
The Upshot
This is just one example of how authorities have to deal with such puzzles, because the lack of evidences can’t categorically constitute such gestures a real threat. A similar case took place in NYC, where a teen was charged for a terrorist threat for posting emoji of a police officer, followed by three guns on his Facebook.
The jury decided not to indict the teen because it was declared a case of overreach by the law enforcement body.
Attorneys have been still determining whether these emojis can be considered an actual threat and be presented as evidence to juries. But the greatest hurdle is to understand the actual intention of the defendant, which is not really possible simply through the emojis.
I believe that there is no way authorities should consider the use of emojis a threat, as they are used for fun reasons and not for some insidious agenda. And given that my son uses words like “dead” and “bomb” , at least 10 times a day when he has to explain something as “cool” or “amazing”, I can, under no circumstance, advocate charging teens for the use of emojis.
But it seems like the legal system will take some time to come to a conclusion over this, till then, be careful with what your kids are sharing online, not just the emojis but everything else. Use Trackmyfone for monitoring the digital activities of your teens.
Do you think emojis should be taken as a serious threat? Let us know in the comments.
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