Amanda Todd and bullying

“Privacy is not something that I’m merely entitled to, it’s an absolute prerequisite.”  – Marlon Brando

A while back I’d intended to write something about the suicide of Amanda Todd, but for whatever reasons, the article never got written. But last night, an article on Google’s list of the most-searched online persons for 2012 caught my eye.
And though Amanda wasn’t at the top of the list, she was within the top ten. And we could all learn quite a few things from Amanda Todd.
Firstly, she was a victim of severe bullying, both at her school and over the Internet. But this bullying only started after she logged onto a webcam site, met a 30-year old man, and took off her shirt for him. Then he posted the topless pictures of her all over the Internet.
And interestingly, all this happened while she was still in the seventh grade (our “1st Form”).
Now, I don’t know about most people, but I pretty much spent my seventh grade life doing what I thought was regular kid stuff, like reading books, looking at movies, playing Quidditch. So to read about a seventh grader webcamming with a 30-year old, leaves me saying, “What?!”
And where were her parents while all of this was going on? I really can’t even process how parents could be so clueless about what’s going on with their kid’s life that they wouldn’t notice that their kid is busy consorting with a man who’s clearly disturbed.
But that brings me to another issue. Chatting with complete and absolute strangers. I really don’t get it. I mean, people can make you believe anything about them if you’re just IM’ing or texting or something. Really! You’ve never met this person before. You can’t see their facial expression to tell if they’re lying. I mean what if they’re some sort of serial killer, or the Joker or Batman or something? You can never tell.
And sharing personal details with complete strangers? Yeah, that’s real smart.
I just don’t get it.
Anyway, after he posted the topless pictures of her all over the Web, her classmates saw the pictures and teased her and bullied her so much that she had to leave town.
And we all know how cruel kids can be. Bullying happens in almost every school in varying degrees. And now, bullying isn’t limited to face-to-face instances. The Internet allows you to bully someone all the way in Australia by just typing out a couple of letters on your computer.
And things like cyber bullying are very much a reality. We’re living in a world where distance is becoming meaningless. You can speak to someone half-way across the world as if they were in the next room. Who knows, maybe they’re already putting the finishing touches on the teleportation machines.
But the point is, as much as you can access information at your fingertips in literally the blink of an eye, information about you can be accessed just as quickly. It could be a picture, a message, a video, anything really. One minute it’s shared among people you know and the next someone in China could be seeing what you looked like dancing at your birthday party.
Sometimes the exposure and the tendency of things to go viral work out pretty well. Just look at PSY. I doubt there’s anyone who hasn’t heard Gangnam Style at least once.
But other times, it could be dangerous. Just look at Amanda Todd – one moment of indiscretion ended up haunting her for the rest of her life. A moment that could have been contained and forgotten was splashed across the Internet for everyone to see, never to be forgotten.
This is the world we live in, and for better or worse, everyone is connected. So it’s up to you, as an individual to decide how you want to live in this new world. I’m not an existentialist but as with everything, you always have a choice in how you live your life.