Amanda Todd: The Impact of Cyber Bullying

Lamb · #1

Hey guys. I don't know if you've heard of this or not, but it's a pretty big story at the moment, so I decided to post this here.

This was taken from Wikipedia:

Quote:

Amanda Michelle Todd (died October 10, 2012) was a 15-year-old Canadian teenager who committed suicide attributed to cyber-bullying through the social networking website Facebook. On 7 September 2012, Todd posted a video on YouTube in which she used a series of flash cards to tell of her experience of being bullied. In it she regrets sending an image of her breasts to a man who later circulated it around the internet.

Shortly before 6:00 pm on October 10, 2012, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were called to her home in Port Coquitlam, to investigate what they refer to as a "sudden death". They have since launched a full investigation into Todd's death. Police are conducting interviews, reviewing content at social media sites, and are actively monitoring pages.

Christy Clark, the Premier of British Columbia, made an online statement of condolence suggesting a national discussion be made discussing criminalizing cyber-bullying.

Todd was a 10th-grade student at CABE Secondary in Coquitlam.

YouTube Message

On 7 September 2012, Todd posted a 9-minute YouTube video entitled My Story: Struggling, bullying, suicide and self harm, in which she used a series of flash cards to tell of her experience of being bullied. The video post went viral, receiving over 1,600,000 views by 13 October 2012, with online newspapers around the world linking to it.

Summary of message

The following is a summary of statements made in the video:

While in seventh grade, Todd met with friends over video chat to meet new people over the internet. She was complimented with such terms as "stunning", "beautiful", and "perfect". During one of these sessions, someone wanted her to show her breasts, and she complied.

A year later, an anonymous user left a message on her Facebook profile. A user who had her personal details blackmailed her, threatening to send topless pictures of Todd to others if she did not give them a "show". At 4 am during Christmas break, police arrived at Todd's door, possibly to inform her that photos of her breasts were circulating on the Internet. She became sick, started to experience anxiety, major depression and panic disorder.

After moving to a different home, she began to take drugs and alcohol. Her anxiety worsened, and she couldn't go out of the house.

A year later, the person who had blackmailed her re-entered her life, posting a list of her friends and school. He used an image of her breasts as his profile picture. Subsequently, she was ostracized by her peers. She began self-mutilation by cutting herself. She changed schools again. Within the month, her situation had improved, despite her isolation.

A month after that, she began communicating with an "old guy friend". They exchanged text messages. He told her that he liked her. She knew he had a girlfriend. He invited her to his home while his girlfriend was on vacation, and they engaged in some form of sex.

After a week, she received a text message warning her to get out of school. The girlfriend and the "old guy friend" with fifteen others came to find her. During the confrontation, the girlfriend stated "look around nobody likes you", in the presence of approximately 50 other students. One of the students yelled out for the girl to punch Todd. The girlfriend then threw Todd to the ground and struck her several times while students filmed it. Teachers ran to her aid, but she remained in the "ditch", where her father eventually recovered her. After arriving home, she drank bleach, and was taken to hospital by ambulance for treatment. Upon returning home, she discovered that the incident was reported on Facebook, with such remarks as "she deserved it", "did you wash the mud out of your hair?", and "I hope shes dead."

Todd then moved again to live in another city with her mother. Six months after the incident, people were still posting images of bleach, Clorox, and ditches, and tagging her in them with comments such as "She should try a different bleach", "I hope she dies this time and isn't so stupid.", and "They said I hope she sees this and kills herself".

She began constantly cutting herself and taking anti-depressants, and was receiving counselling. Around that time, she had overdosed, and spent two days in hospital.

Here's a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOHXGNx-E7E (WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGE OF CUT ARM AT THE END)

I just feel so bad for this girl...and I can't believe people are still attacking her even after she died. It's just terrible.

Anyway, you can use this thread to discuss Amanda's life and also to discuss the situation of cyber bullying and bullying in general in our world.

Joaz Banbeck · #2

Where were the adults?

The only one I notice doing anything is her mother. Teachers? Principle? Counselors? Assult and battery were filmed. Why was nobody prosecuted?

Lamb · #3

Yeah, I have no idea. I mean, after she drank bleach and went to the hospital you'd think her parents would've have supervised her constantly to make sure something like that didn't happen again, and to ask her about how the whole thing happened, but no. It's really awful. Bullying in general isn't given that much attention unfortunately, even though it has devastating psychological impacts on the victims. Though my school is apparently having an assembly regarding the issue of cyber-safety this month so I guess that's going to change.

jts · #4

As with many things this will only be BREAKING NEWS for the next week or so, and so I guess from a certain point of view that means that people in the "Something must be done!" camp need to get in their intense feelings about it right now, since they know next week they'll be lethargic again. But if you can find it within yourself, you should try to wait until the investigation is complete before jumping to conclusions. A Wikipedia article based on assertions by a bunch of excited teenagers is not likely to be the best source of information about this tragic episode, and one tragic episode isn't going to shed a lot of light on a social phenomenon.

(Social science joke: how does a ~~anthrop~~ journalist spell the singular of data?)

Suicide is a serious problem. It's the leading cause of death for young adults (under 35) in some developed nations, which makes it a bigger problem than traffic fatalities, much more common than murder, and approximately five bazillion times more serious than terrorism. It's also a complex issue that reflects broader social problems. People have been studying suicide in a serious statistical way since 1897, to try to tease out the causes. There were a lot of suicides in 1897, but I can assure you that "cyber-bullying" did not cause any of them. I don't think "cyber-bullying" explains why men are about five times as likely to commit suicide as women; why suicide rates rise so rapidly in the late teens and then again in old age; why the prevalence of suicide differs among nations, religions, and ethnic groups; or why skinnier people are monotonically more likely to kill themselves. I think "cyber-bullying" is especially unlikely to explain why US suicide rates rose dramatically from 1950 to 1975, and then dropped slightly in the past 40 years. I don't think DARPA was even working on the internet in 1975, although perhaps people were mailing each other envelopes filled with harassing punchcards.

Jayy · #5

We often have group assemblies where the topics of bullying and cyber-bullying are discussed.
Sadly many students take this as a joke and don't pay attention to the lecture. For those students that do listen many of them just forget about it a week later and partake in such activities.
This is because they don't understand what 'bullying is,they think of it as making death threats and physical violence (The way it is often described in the media). Bullying is not just confined to those extremes, there are many other ways to do so which many of my classmates partake in. Whether it is, making fun of someone to their face, behind their backs, excluding someone,spreading gossip, teasing someone incessantly. It is bullying. Students need to be educated that these small things they do are bullying, not just about the extreme cases of bullying.

One thing I've noticed is that everyone gets bullied in a way, no matter who you are or how popular you are. It's sad but an incredible amount of students of my age have low confidence and attempt to make up for it by belittling others.

Just this morning some younger kids from my bus were rambling about how they made a blackberry group called "Ugly looking people". They had 200 pictures in the group(that's half my school). Of course everyone knew about it because they didn't care if we knew. They took a picture of the guy sitting across from me and he knew why, I was heartbroken just from seeing the dejection on his face. He made up for it later by picking on another student. It's a vicious cycle and it's very difficult to put and end to.

An older girl on my bus was furious after she heard about their group, she made them delete the group and lectured them about what they did. I hope they understood the message, I sure did. Thank god for good samaritans like those, maybe there is hope after all.

Joaz Banbeck · #6

Jayy wrote:

...
An older girl on my bus was furious after she heard about their group, she made them delete the group and lectured them about what they did. I hope they understood the message, I sure did. Thank god for good samaritans like those, maybe there is hope after all.

I assume everyone here knows about the famous Milgram experiment, in which a depressingly large percentage of test subjects participated in apparent torture of another person at the orders of an authority figure. ( For those who aren't familiar, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment )

Amy Sterling Casil wrote:

Eli Roth, creator of the Hostel films...rebooted Milgram's experiment... Roth featured a... safer test ... The updated experiment also introduced a "guardian angel" representing the influence of good. It turned out that when an actor pretending to be a part of the experiment spoke up against the shocks, participants quickly refused to continue.

Often, all it takes is one person.

To all of you reading this: next time that you see something, will you be that person?

daal · #7

Joaz Banbeck wrote:

To all of you reading this: next time that you see something, will you be that person?

One strategy that makes it easier to be that person is to get some support first. This is useful in any kind of bullying situation, as it helps prevent you from becoming the victim yourself. Tell another bystander that you need their help - then you're stronger when confronting the bully. (Think: iron pillar).

Boidhre · #8

Lamb wrote:

Yeah, I have no idea. I mean, after she drank bleach and went to the hospital you'd think her parents would've have supervised her constantly to make sure something like that didn't happen again

Stopping a truly suicidal person from killing themselves is incredibly difficult. There's a good reason that they're locked up in secure wings of hospitals in this country and not even allowed access to shoelaces and similar despite 24 monitoring by professionals. I don't think the parents can be said to have failed here with preventing her from killing herself from a "dealing with a suicidal person" point of view.

SoDesuNe · #9

Joaz Banbeck wrote:

Where were the adults?

The only one I notice doing anything is her mother. Teachers? Principle? Counselors? Assult and battery were filmed. Why was nobody prosecuted?

She explained in her video, that she didn't want to press charges to faster escape from the things happening - if I remember correctly. What troubles me a lot more is why she didn't quit Facebook a long time ago. Interesting though, I never saw that mentioned before. Changing places, changing schools, but staying where everything began...

It's a really sad story and it's horrible to see what teenagers can do to each other just for the fun of it.

Phelan · **#10**

Like jts, I am sort of skeptical about the subject until it is investigated more. It is a tragic thing to have happened, and it shows that our social identities are ever more online, but there have been too many cases of suicide completely unlinked to the internet for this one to be the most critical.

Bullying is a serious matter, but most people forget about these cases soon, feeling good that they cared for the time it was popular.

And some of those social experiments like milgram's are sobering. It shows me that you always need to make a conscious effort to avoid becoming an aggressor, or being complicit with one.

Phelan · **#11**

Joaz Banbeck wrote:

Amy Sterling Casil wrote:

Eli Roth, creator of the Hostel films...rebooted Milgram's experiment... Roth featured a... safer test ... The updated experiment also introduced a "guardian angel" representing the influence of good. It turned out that when an actor pretending to be a part of the experiment spoke up against the shocks, participants quickly refused to continue.

Often, all it takes is one person.

Could you link me to that reboot of the experiment? It's not on the wiki article linked.

Bonobo · **#12**

http://open.salon.com/blog/zacherydtayl ... _extensive

Google search for “eli roth experiment” brings up a lot more results.

Joaz Banbeck · **#13**

Phelan wrote:

Joaz Banbeck wrote:

Amy Sterling Casil wrote:

Eli Roth, creator of the Hostel films...rebooted Milgram's experiment... Roth featured a... safer test ... The updated experiment also introduced a "guardian angel" representing the influence of good. It turned out that when an actor pretending to be a part of the experiment spoke up against the shocks, participants quickly refused to continue.

Often, all it takes is one person.

Could you link me to that reboot of the experiment? It's not on the wiki article linked.

I didn't have a direct link, just this second hand link: http://www.policymic.com/articles/16487 ... ple/248138

Fedya · **#14**

Lamb wrote:

It's really awful. Bullying in general isn't given that much attention unfortunately, even though it has devastating psychological impacts on the victims.

Probably because the State is often the biggest bully of them all.

A few months back, we had a woman whose sole claim to fame is sleeping with a prominent elected official go on national television and bully an Olympic gold medalist over the gold medalist's food choices. The reaction ought to be to tell the bully to mind her own [insert expletive of your choice here] business, and tell her to her face that what she's doing is downright evil. But if anybody had actually tried that, it would have been a national scandal.

If you want a less-controversial example of state-sanctioned version, try this one: High school refuses valedictorian diploma for using the word "hell" in her valedictory speech

jts · **#15**

Fedya wrote:

A few months back, we had a woman whose sole claim to fame is sleeping with a prominent elected official go on national television and bully an Olympic gold medalist over the gold medalist's food choices. The reaction ought to be to tell the bully to mind her own [insert expletive of your choice here] business, and tell her to her face that what she's doing is downright evil. But if anybody had actually tried that, it would have been a national scandal.

can't tell if serious

Wessik · **#16**

I do not feel sympathy for her. Sympathy is reserved for people that I respect. To put it simply: I do not respect people who commit suicide.

cyclops · **#17**

I hate this subject and I hate the last post.

jts · **#18**

cyclops wrote:

I hate this subject and I hate the last post.

Wessik's point gave me an icky feeling too, but in qualified defense: when someone commits suicide, there is a tendency, quite rightly, for everyone to attempt, too late, to give the victim the praise, admiration, and loving support that they had conspicuously failed to provide him or her in life. This, in turn, forms part of the common attitude among depressed people that all of their problems would be solved if they were gone.

I believe Lucian reports that in the town of Abdera, in Greece, there was a spate of copycat suicides by young women. People were in shock; the superstitious thought it was a curse, or evil demons, or a sign of divine wrath. The magistrate, on the other hand, thought it could be stopped. When the next suicide occurred, he hanged the corpse naked off the city walls like that of a common criminal. And that was the end of their suicide problem.

Boidhre · **#19**

Wessik wrote:

To put it simply: I do not respect people who commit suicide.

So you don't respect people with mental illnesses then?

jts, that's not a good defence of his point at all, not that I disagree with what you said, though I question your last point about a common attitude amongst depressed people. I'm not sure how common that exact thought and whether the causality you draw is correct.

HKA · **#20**

Wessik wrote:

I do not feel sympathy for her. Sympathy is reserved for people that I respect. To put it simply: I do not respect people who commit suicide.

I really think you mistake sympathy for admiration. If she had fought her way through this dark tunnel and come out the other side, I would respect and admire her.

But how can she not have my sympathy?

Yes, suicide is wrong - often a very selfish, hurtful and cowardly tenuki. But if we reserve our sympathy only for the strong, we will find ourselves ill prepared for when adversity strikes in our own lives. Our capacity to appreciate and empathize with the struggles of others, gives us a deeper strength for dealing with our own issues than admiration and hero worship ever will.

I cannot admire someone I do not respect, but I can sympathize with those who are less than perfect. It would be strange world and a stranger dictionairy were we to only have sympathy for the perfect.

Amanda Todd: The Impact of Cyber Bullying

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