In remembrance of Amanda Todd, a young 15 year old teenager who committed suicide after posting the video above describing how she was tormented by bullies and struggling with depression.
Amanda’s story and cry for help was not told with words, but told little by little via flash cards posted in a YouTube video. Full detail about the relentless bullying and torment is shared, conveying how the experience became her version of hell on earth.
This story isn’t a typical one, but one that exist in a subtle variety even in Malaysia. Bullying is not something new, it has been around for a while. What is new to our society is cyber bullying or cyber harassment. As in Amanda’s case, social networks like Facebook and many others enabled these bullies to continue harassing Amanda even after she choose to switch schools and even move to different cities. Under normal circumstances, switching schools would have put some distance between these bullies and Amanda and allowed Amanda to start afresh.
However, in the digital world of the hyper-connected community, switching schools did very little in putting any distance between them. An important difference between ‘normal’ and cyber bullying and harassment is that in the cyber-world, it knows no boundaries.
The other fundamental difference in cyber bullying and harassment is it’s persistence. A malicious post or a bad comment on a social network page can linger on forever, moreover shared and spread without bounds. Someone cannot just forget or erase it once it’s out there, Google searching it would directly link you to numerous different sources of the same content.
With such pervasiveness and persistence, there is still a glimmer of hope if we choose to be informed to not only prevent, but handle cyber bullying and harassment when it occurs. Here are 5 ways:
Amanda’s story and cry for help was not told with words, but told little by little via flash cards posted in a YouTube video. Full detail about the relentless bullying and torment is shared, conveying how the experience became her version of hell on earth.
This story isn’t a typical one, but one that exist in a subtle variety even in Malaysia. Bullying is not something new, it has been around for a while. What is new to our society is cyber bullying or cyber harassment. As in Amanda’s case, social networks like Facebook and many others enabled these bullies to continue harassing Amanda even after she choose to switch schools and even move to different cities. Under normal circumstances, switching schools would have put some distance between these bullies and Amanda and allowed Amanda to start afresh.
However, in the digital world of the hyper-connected community, switching schools did very little in putting any distance between them. An important difference between ‘normal’ and cyber bullying and harassment is that in the cyber-world, it knows no boundaries.
The other fundamental difference in cyber bullying and harassment is it’s persistence. A malicious post or a bad comment on a social network page can linger on forever, moreover shared and spread without bounds. Someone cannot just forget or erase it once it’s out there, Google searching it would directly link you to numerous different sources of the same content.
With such pervasiveness and persistence, there is still a glimmer of hope if we choose to be informed to not only prevent, but handle cyber bullying and harassment when it occurs. Here are 5 ways:
- Recognize the situation for what it is: Online harassment. It can also be referred to as cyberbullying, but regardless of the name, know that this is a sign of weakness for the perpetrator. As upsetting as it can be, recognize that it’s extremely important that you DO NOT respond to this person. Engaging with the bully often only makes matters worse. They feed off their victim’s misery and pain.
- Make a copy of the message, photo or video: The best way to do this is to copy the URL of the specific webpage where it’s happening. Then screenshot the webpage, just in case, as proof to build your case in any legal instances.
- Contact the website operators by phone, email and any contact submission forms that they have available on their site. Request that they take the content down immediately, and let them know that you’re filing a case with your local police department. Remain persistent. Continue calling and emailing the website operators until the content has been removed.
- File a report with your local police department. While some police departments have an “Internet crimes division,” many do not. So unfortunately, in many cases the police can only get involved if your life has been threatened.
- If necessary, file a complaint with the Multimedia Communications And Multimedia Commission. To work together to track down serious cases of online criminal complaints and shutting them down.
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