Criminal law, cyberbullying and other forms of (non-sexual) harassment in cyberspace

Social networks, in particular, and the Internet, in general, now represent a new ambit for personal development, a new life space where people spend hours of their day communicating with others and forming relationships, and where, thus, there are attacks on individuals and their honour, liberty, privacy or personal dignity. This article analyses the response of Spanish criminal law to the different forms of non-sexual harassment of minors in cyberspace. Following the description and conceptualization of phenomena such as cyberbullying or individual acts of online harassment, the article analyses the specific incorporation of different forms of harassment of minors, whether continuous or not, in the different types of the particular part of the law. There is no criminal precept that expressly regulates most of these acts (despite the basic type of crimes against moral integrity having been made the benchmark crime for the courts). The types of crime that can be applied to these harassing behaviours -generally among peers -which are starting to proliferate in cyberspace are varied (threat, coercion, slander, etc.), as can be seen in the wide range of jurisprudence.