What Teenage Suicides Teach Us About Online Bullying
24 April 2014
The suicide of Amanda Todd in Canada caused societal uproar on an international level, with parents, teachers, and governments calling for greater awareness of the dangers of social media. The news became so widely spread not because of the event alone – tragically, suicides relating to bullying are all too common – but because of the Youtube video she made.
Amanda had been hounded by a man, suspected to be 35-year-old Aydin Coban who is awaiting trial, after she lifted her top for him on recorded webcam. He pursued and threatened her so relentlessly that she eventually recorded her ‘confession’ surrounding the events and then hung herself.
This highlighted two things:
Online Dangers
Firstly, that it is easy to bully people online, to trick them, and to find out a great amount of private information. In Amanda Todd’s case, it involved the forgivable but fatal mistake of ‘sexting’ Aydin Coban, which he then used for blackmail. He befriended her new school-mates online, pretending to be a young man nervous about moving there, and when she refused to give Aydin a “repeat performance” he spread the pictures far and wide.
Fight Fire with Fire
Secondly, we should never underestimate the power of fighting back through the same medium. Amanda’s Youtube video has over 17 million views online. As Amanda’s mother told the Vancouver Sun, “I have lost one child, but know she wanted her story to save 1,000 more. Amanda wanted to tell her story to help other kids.”
Digital Youth Work
There are also interesting youth work developments happening online. London-based charity BeatBullying, for example, specifically aims to tackle bullying through online mentoring. Young volunteers are trained to be mentors and offer emotional support and practical advice to other young people, and it is exactly this kind of anonymous, online support and advice that is so crucial.
According to their website; “As well as mentoring, the BeatBullying programmes teach young people how to be great citizens on and offline; how to safely explore the internet and report and handle both cyber and real-world bullying.
If the bullies are online, then that’s where child protection services need to be also. Although it is too late for Amanda Todd, we must learn from her tragedy, as well as her message.