Research on Amanda Todd: Cyberbullying Essay

Todds suicide received widespread, international media coverage, much of which included a link to Todds YouTube video and an email address provided by the RCMP appealing for information from the public. Within 24 hours of the appeal, over 400 tips were received.9 The RCMP has stated that its investigation was hindered by the amount of false information in online postings after Todds death, and scams claiming to raise money for her family. Amanda Todd, a 15-year-old Canadian schoolgirl hanged herself, last week, after years of unrelenting abuse by peers and online predators, one of whom persuaded her to flash her breasts and then shared the opinion around the world. In a personal video posted on the internet weeks before her death, Amanda told her story of struggling, bullying, suicide, self-harm. The sexual bullying of women and girls online is not a pertly phenomenon and Amandas story is not unusual. A quick search shows hundreds of similar videos of tormented young women across t he world telling intimate tales of loneliness and abuse, often by bullies who use the internet to ogle and harass women and girls with impunity. What is unusual is that this week, a fight back began.Since her suicide, more than one million Facebook users have liked Todds Facebook memorial page.93334 Mingled among the positive support and comments are continuing attack posts and images from strangers and those claiming to be her former classmates, such as a message stating Im so happy shes dead now. 9 After one mans derogatory Facebook comments about Todds death were reported to his employer, the Grafton-Fraser Mr. Big & Tall fit out chain confirmed that he was no longer an employeeOf course, the problem is far bigger than a few isolated creeps. The problem is a culture that persecutes women and girls for cosmos visible online and in the physical world. Until bullies everywhere, in schools, on the internet and in positions of power, get the message that sexual abuse and harassment of women and girls has real, tangible consequences for them as healthy as for their victims, vigilante e-justice will remain the only effective way forwomen and their supporters to hit back.