Amanda Todd: The Impact of Cyber Bullying

[Style_Dota]

So I'm not sure how many people have heard of this, but it's a pretty big story right now, and it's definitely worth posting here. This was taken from Wikipedia:

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.


You can watch the video here. It's about 10 minutes, but it's a heartbreaking story and it's worth hearing this poor girl out.


[youtube]vOHXGNx-E7E[/youtube]

Edit: Here is Solace's Post, basically summarizing what this thread is set to achieve.


​

 

[elcheeso]

It's sad. I feel sorry for anyone who's going through school in the age of Facebook. Bullying was shitty enough before you also added the ease of communication of social media. That being said, I'm not entirely sure what anyone expects could be done about this sort of thing. Criminalising cyber bullying without doing the same with RL bullying seems pretty backwards, as if bullies you're physically around are somehow less bad than the ones being horrible douchebags on Facebook... because what, you could move away? You could also stop using social media, if you want to use that argument. As for the morality of criminalising bullying... well... I'm probably too biased there, but it makes me uncomfortable. Where do you draw the line?

On a related note, I have this distinct feeling this thread will end up being a lot of people saying "have you ever tried not being depressed/suicidal?" or "I was bullied and I never killed myself so anyone that does is an idiot", if Smogon is anything like the kind of people who are leaving comments on that Youtube video. Fucking depressing.

 

[capefeather]

It's always hard to say what to do to deal with issues like this. There are a lot of factors here that could be addressed, but the solutions that immediately come to mind seem like they'd be either ineffective really difficult to enforce.

There's the fact that multiple people engaged in the bullying. Part of it is herd mentality, and part of it is our natural tendency to condemn people who are different from us, who we don't relate to. So many times, we think that judging people who do "bad things" will make the person stop or otherwise make the situation better, and then we're confused when the opposite occurs. Yet, how do you address this? You can't just tell people not to do something and expect it to work. It's not that easy to alter our very psychology. Hopefully this incident will at least have a positive impact on the immediate community, because it is the kind of incident that causes people to wake up and see reality. And then something similar will happen somewhere else and the cycle will continue.

The other side is that Amanda Todd made multiple incredibly stupid decisions. I hardly think I need to list them. Yet, again, you can't just tell people not to do things and expect it to work. We've been trying that with sex, alcohol and other drugs, distracted/drunk driving, etc. but people will simply abandon logic in the "right" situations and engage in these activities in unhealthy/destructive ways (I have nothing against engaging in sex/drugs in a healthy way, to be clear on that). I suppose a lot of it is that some actions are in a "gray area" where they're okay in very specific contexts and dumb in others. I think the best thing we can do here is to educate as many people as we can about this stuff in an intelligent manner that doesn't blanket demonize certain actions (because that doesn't really work) but looks at situations in a realistic way.

EDIT: And yeah, I'm not even bothering to read comments from idiots on YouTube.

 

[Aura Guardian]

The.. The sheer inhumanity of those people... The... UGH. Those people are disgusting and need to be punished. We need harsher laws to punish the people responsible. I'm not normally one to want stricter laws for the internet. But this... this reminds me why we need them.

EDIT: If it were possible to punish every last one of them who was involved in this case, and in other cases, then I'd say DO IT without hesitation. Even only half, or even only one. But I would also try breaking the herd mentality, somehow. Anything within reason to put a stop to stuff like this, or at least put a large damper on it.

 

[Stagnant]

I blame society for raising emotional and irrational children.

 

[biggie]

While it was very shitty how she was treated, she did not help her situation at all with any of the decisions that she made. When you put yourself out there onto the internet, you're going to need thick skin in order to handle whatever comes back at you. Ultimately, where is her personal support system to help shield her from this type of wonton abuse? And I do agree with Stagnant in that the current and upcoming generation of kids are wholly too sensitive and easily influenced by what other people do.

 

[jrrrrrrr]

How do you stop cyber-bullying?

Turn off your computer.

Seriously, it's that easy. I am sad to hear about this but ultimately she is to blame. She killed herself because she was anxious about the consequences of her own actions.

The.. The sheer inhumanity of those people... The... UGH. Those people are disgusting and need to be punished. We need harsher laws to punish the people responsible. I'm not normally one to want stricter laws for the internet. But this... this reminds me why we need them.

EDIT: If it were possible to punish every last one of them who was involved in this case, and in other cases, then I'd say DO IT without hesitation. Even only half, or even only one. But I would also try breaking the herd mentality, somehow. Anything within reason to put a stop to stuff like this, or at least put a large damper on it.

Oh god no. The last thing we need is another overreaching knee-jerk law to take away the rights of responsible and rational adults...errr..I mean to "protect children". This is one case out of the literally BILLIONS of people who use the internet. This does not deserve a law. No person has ever been killed by words.

 

[Jebus McAzn]

Agreeing with jrrrrrrr on this one. This is one example of a case that the Internet jumps on and acts indignant about, then will forget about and will continue to do nothing about the hundreds of similar cases that happen every week.

for example

 

[Style_Dota]

While it was very shitty how she was treated, she did not help her situation at all with any of the decisions that she made. When you put yourself out there onto the internet, you're going to need thick skin in order to handle whatever comes back at you. Ultimately, where is her personal support system to help shield her from this type of wonton abuse? And I do agree with Stagnant in that the current and upcoming generation of kids are wholly too sensitive and easily influenced by what other people do.

How much do you know about the world when you are 12 years old? Seriously, no one has that much worldly experience at that age, and as mature as you think you are, I highly doubt you would be emotionally stable if you were a 13 year old girl that had her naked picture sent to everybody. Yeah, she made a mistake, we all do, but her mistake back-lashed into something that haunted her for her life. Having to go outside or go to school knowing that EVERYONE is looking down on you is not something that a child can emotionally handle. And to be honest, I think she did a pretty good job, since the first time she attempted suicide was two years after the first incident, when she got the shit kicked out of her.

How can you say she's too sensitive when you have never been in her situation? As someone who has been there, I can say that it's absolutely fucking miserable. Going home crying because you simply wish you had a friend is one of the fucking hardest things to have to deal with for anyone. And if you understood the whole story, I think you would understand where she is coming from a little bit more.

I am sad to hear about this but ultimately she is to blame. She killed herself because she was anxious about the consequences of her own actions.

Is this really true? I think she had been dealing with the consequences of her actions for quite a while, but it's incredibly hard to deal with the pressure of it. Imagine you attempted to commit suicide, survived, and then came home to find out that people wished that you actually died, and that they displayed this in a very public manner? She didn't make another attempt until 6 months later, so how was she afraid? She clearly dealt with the consequences, but when you're so emotionally unstable after so much abuse, there's only so much your mind can handle.

If you're referring to the boy she slept with, you're thinking of it in a very narrow minded view. Sure, from the outside perspective, yeah she was involved in an affair, but this girl has never had anyone outside of her family who has shown her love and affection. Can you really blame her for trying to just get someone who loves her?

Edit: Also, comparing one death to another is unfair. Completely different scenarios (and that image is completely biased). People can also easily relate to bullying compared to rape. There are also a ton of people who are posting fucked up things about her as well, so yeah...that image was probably made by a black activist, since her FB page has significantly more support than that image.

 

[Byrne]

^ how the fuck/why the fuck does that include the topless picture she sent that man? do the black squares even suffice to make that not-child porn? that's fucking weird

anyway, this is a deplorable situation in almost every single facet of it. i hate the world.

 

[Danmire]

Edit: Also, comparing one death to another is unfair. Completely different scenarios (and that image is completely biased). People can also easily relate to bullying compared to rape. There are also a ton of people who are posting fucked up things about her as well, so yeah...that image was probably made by a black activist.

I believe the image was made to tell how Todd's incident was a first world problem compared to Gray's.

 

[Style_Dota]

I believe the image was made to tell how Todd's incident was a first world problem compared to Gray's.

If you look at the bottom of the image, it says "In this country, America means White", yeah...

Edit: I think people keep thinking this girl is older than she was...

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

What sickens me is how they continue to make fun of her, after she died. Talk about beating a dead horse Jesus Christ. The very least you can do after the death of someone that you partially caused the death of, is to shut the hell up. Honestly if you find yourself defending these people, or making fun of her yourself, you need to take a look at yourself and realize the scumbag that you are.

 

[The QWAZ]

Obviously this is an absolutely disgusting case but I really don't think social media is to blame. The news seems to have an obsession with demonizing facebook, twitter ect, just so they have something other than people to blame.
If you look at the story most of what happened to her was in schools with the repercussions going around facebook and youtube; there is a slightly similar situation at my school at the moment, a kid is being bullied constantly at school - no one does anything- but when it goes on facebook the police are at the school, the teachers are giving detention to anybody who looks at him funny. Sorry to go of on a tangent but to me it seems like when a terrible thing like this happens it's not until it goes online that anybody really cares.

Flashing your boobs on the internet is a sure fire way to get ridiculed and mocked, especially if you give them to a stranger on the internet, seriously people get mocked for making grammar mistakes, just how did she think striping would go. Don't get me wrong i'm not blaming her but i can't help but feel that blaming this incident on cyber bulling is wrong, it was a combination of stupid mistakes on her part, school based bullying and the dark part of the internet.

 

[BlakBlastoise]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned her parents yet, since she was a minor... I think they could have prevented the situation from escalating to such a dramatic climax if they would have been smarter about it. They probably wouldn't have been able to keep her from showing her tits, but they could/should have kept their daughter from using the computer for stupid shit after the fact. Why the hell does a 12 year old have a face book in the first place? Don't you have to be like 13 or someshit at least? or does smogon have more strict guidelines than FB lol. Again, I blame this on the parents. They should not have allowed her to use a site like FB, or let her go to some random guy's house where they could "engage in some form of sex."
People kill themselves every single day. I don't see why this deserves its own thread.

edit: welp, I guess she was 15, not 12. Same shit. Still shouldn't be using fb, and if she was the parents should have been very strict about monitoring it/her

 

[biggie]

How much do you know about the world when you are 12 years old? Seriously, no one has that much worldly experience at that age, and as mature as you think you are, I highly doubt you would be emotionally stable if you were a 13 year old girl that had her naked picture sent to everybody. Yeah, she made a mistake, we all do, but her mistake back-lashed into something that haunted her for her life. Having to go outside or go to school knowing that EVERYONE is looking down on you is not something that a child can emotionally handle. And to be honest, I think she did a pretty good job, since the first time she attempted suicide was two years after the first incident, when she got the shit kicked out of her.

How can you say she's too sensitive when you have never been in her situation? As someone who has been there, I can say that it's absolutely fucking miserable. Going home crying because you simply wish you had a friend is one of the fucking hardest things to have to deal with for anyone. And if you understood the whole story, I think you would understand where she is coming from a little bit more.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I know what she went through; I very clearly don't. But my upbringing and my support system, which I referenced in my post, would certainly not have allowed me to delve that much into the scum of the internet. Even if I wasn't a mature 12-13 year old (which I was), I knew enough not to do outrageously stupid things like that especially more than once. I'm not giving those who bullied her a pass, or saying that this whole thing is her fault. The way she was treated is absolutely deplorable and if I were her parent, I'd most certainly have put a stop to it. What I am saying is that there needs to be some onus put on individuals as well as the people who are supposed to care for these individuals for making such stupid and rash decisions/raising them to not be able to handle them better.

 

[More Cowbell]

So, basically, it all started with her making nude pictures, right? This whole Amanda Todd thing is another display of why Facebook is a terrible thing for young children. Every 12-year-old has an iPhone these days, and shit like this is bound to happen. Children around the 13-14 year mark can be the meanest children out there, and behind a screen, it's even easier to bully. Really, I think the whole social media culture is the main reason that shit like this happens.

I am a supporter of social media in general, but it's so easy to be an asshole over Facebook.

 

[Aura Guardian]

Oh god no. The last thing we need is another overreaching knee-jerk law to take away the rights of responsible and rational adults...errr..I mean to "protect children". This is one case out of the literally BILLIONS of people who use the internet. This does not deserve a law. No person has ever been killed by words.

Although the conversation has moved on a bit, I figure I should at least explain that I did not intend to imply something of what you suggested. I was thinking more like making existing laws give harsher punishments as deterrent, not outlawing other stuff. This is along the lines of upping a punishment from a slap on the wrist to something far more severe, not putting chains on everyone for something they might do.

re: prevent through deterrence, not overreaching knee-jerk laws. Though I probably could have phrased my post better.

 

[Steamroll]

I still find it very hypocritical of the people who did bully her in school to all the sudden be kind and respectful about her death like they're not partly responsible for causing her that much grief.

This is one of those cases that could've been avoided with a little thing called common sense. It's not hard to use when you're 12, 13, hell all through middle and high school. It's basically from 7th grade to Junior year where all this shit happens because everyone is so caught up about their appearances and their social status (like it means shit when you don't contribute to society in any way other than being a mouth to feed).

I'll be honest when I say that's what these so called "school social experts" should be telling these damn kids, they don't mean shit to each other beyond the fact that they're going through 6 years of education together. They also need to be more active in trying to spot bullying and ACTUALLY FUCKING ACTING ON IT BEFORE SHIT LIKE THIS HAPPENS. It's so damn productive that all the anti-bullying activists are up in arms about it after she's killed herself.

 

[alamaster]

She didn't just send a picture of her breasts to a man, she did multiple live cam shows. As for the sleeping with a dude who had a gf, well that's just asking to be the black sheep. This kind of thing happens all the time to people that aren't beautiful who you never hear about (Example is Jebus McAzn's post). She obviously didn't deserve to get so depressed that she ends up killing herself, but you have to admit she's a lot at fault here. Going nude on the internet and sleeping with a guy who had a gf are things that she did and should have known the consequences if she were found out. She was playing with fire expecting not to get burned. There are people bullied everyday for things that they can't help such as being gay or being unattractive, awkward or just chosen as the scapegoat for another kid's insecurities. Those are the people that I feel sorry for. It's tragic that she chose to end her life over this but I can't say I feel sympathy for her.

 

[moonbound]

Ok weird- my friends and I just watched Cyberbu//y on a whim on Saturday night.

Like others have said, there are a lot of people who hold some responsibility, and Amanda's poor decisions (especially the decision to stay involved in all of it on Facebook, keeping herself vulnerable) made it worse every step along the way. Todd could have basically ended it by getting off Facebook, but her decision to stay on it allowed her problems to follow her online despite her moving away from them irl. It's heartless to say someone (especially a 15-year-old) deserved to die, but it's hard a good decision she made throughout the whole thing. The fact that she made a video bugs me- it's like she never learned that seeking attention was what put her in such a terrible situation. It's kind of hard to be sympathetic to someone who's so melodramatic about their own problems when there are countless people getting treated worse than she did for problems that they didn't even cause.

It's also unfortunate that a girl with her history was even able to commit suicide, anyone who drank bleach should be under constant supervision and not have access to anything remotely dangerous.

 

[Lee]

i'm not calling for new laws or tougher punishments but i do hope that people look at this and realise that the gap between internet and irl isn't quite as large as we like to believe - a lot of people de-individualise themselves over the internet and that's just dandy but you can't always expect other people to do the same. your online actions do have repercussions.

and it really belittles the situation and the problem to say that she was 'emotional and irrational' or by attempting to deflect some measure of blame towards her being 'wholly too sensitive' or her 'poor decisions.' she was a teenager ffs, it was her prerogative to be emotional, irrational, overly sensitive and make poor decisions. i sure as hell was all of those things...i suspect we all were at some point; it's a part of growing up. rip kid, it should never have been allowed to reach this stage.

oh and this bugged me

The fact that she made a video bugs me- it's like she never learned that seeking attention was what put her in such a terrible situation. It's kind of hard to be sympathetic to someone who's so melodramatic about their own problems when there are countless people getting treated worse than she did for problems that they didn't even cause.

are you that emotionally detached that you can't recognise a blatant cry for help when you see one? i think we have sufficient hindsight to say she wasn't attention-seeking with this one (nb. her being dead and all)

 

[capefeather]

Yeah, I don't really think it helps at all to be pointing fingers and looking to "blame" someone for what happened. We don't really know what anyone involved went through, and for every blame, I could come up with perfectly valid reasons as to why the party may have acted the way they did. So whoever it is you guys are pointing fingers at, does that change the situation at all? The only fact is that someone committed suicide due to various events. Blame doesn't actually achieve anything, and it's little more than a manifestation of our immediate emotional responses. And of course, not blaming doesn't mean we're ignoring things that happened, just looking at them from a perspective that isn't immediately about condemnation (which, fittingly enough, is exactly why all this happened). One thing I always hope out of these incidents is that people will get past the blaming and actually look at the problem and how to solve it.

People kill themselves every single day. I don't see why this deserves its own thread.

Because I suppose this is secretly a discussion about what it means to blame people and how to curb bullying, with one high-profile incident as a catalyst for it.

I was thinking more like making existing laws give harsher punishments as deterrent, not outlawing other stuff. This is along the lines of upping a punishment from a slap on the wrist to something far more severe, not putting chains on everyone for something they might do.

I'm not really convinced that harsher punishments are as successful at deterring negative behaviour as many of us like to believe. I mentioned drunk driving before because of its prevalence despite the extremely harsh punishments for it. Like, people actually get arrested multiple times, get their licenses revoked, have to use a breathalyzer to start their cars, and all that, and they STILL don't get it unless maybe they actually cause a deadly tragedy.

 

[VKCA]

How much do you know about the world when you are 12 years old?

I knew enough not to be naked in front of an uncovered webcam.

 

[Triangles]

Why help someone who is stupid and psychologically weak enough to do everything that got her into trouble, and then self-harm with cutting and drugs and subsequently commit suicide? She got undeserved attention and the video is also very misinformative and biased. Instead of focusing on some stupid white harlot who sold herself out to men at 15, expected no repercussions, and then stupidly wasted her own life, why not focus on some real fucking tragedies with relevance - starvation, malnutrition and thirst, child soldiers, atrocities, repression of women, etc - which affect thousands of people. She squandered her advantaged position in life. What a worthless, melodramatic, and pathetic human being.

Stuff like this makes me incredibly angry at the world.