OPINION: Girl’s suicide not just a bullying problem
Amanda Todd was a 15-year-old high school girl who took her own life earlier this month. Although the exact cause of her death has not been released, foul play has been ruled out at this point, and the focus of the situation has turned primarily to the problem of school bullying.
The basic story – according to Amanda – is this: As a seventh-grader, Amanda chatted online with people, making “friends,” at least one of whom was an older man. This man pressured Amanda to show him her breasts, which she did. The man took a picture and later blackmailed Amanda, saying if she did not expose herself further, he would disseminate the picture among her friends and classmates. The man’s identity and means of finding Amanda’s information is still unclear.
When the picture got out, Amanda’s peers began to hassle her. Amanda then had sex with a boy in her school who had a girlfriend, and when this behavior came to light, Amanda was further bullied and even physically assaulted with no retributive consequences on her tormentors.
The man continued to harass her, even after she changed schools more than once, and Amanda attempted suicide twice before she was finally successful. We know her story because several weeks before her death, she posted a YouTube video in which she tells her narrative on flashcards, without speaking, over background music.
Her death is a tragedy, but any person so young who feels like taking their own life is their last option clearly has more issues at stake than just bullying, and that leads me to ask the question: Is Amanda the appropriate poster child for the fight against school bullying?
I don’t think so. In fact, I think idolizing Amanda has potential to do more harm than good among other teens.
In seventh grade, Amanda Todd was probably twelve or thirteen. The fact that she exposed herself to a man on the Internet has less to do with a teenager’s dumb decision than the fact that Amanda’s Internet use was so unmonitored by her parents that she was frequently chatting with someone who convinced her to flash him. This, to me, is a huger issue than bullying: Where were her parents, and why, after being pursued by a pervert from school to school, were no charges pressed against this man?
I understand I’m treading sensitive water here, but I think Amanda had issues of her own as well. She wrote in her video of having anxiety, depression and other disorders. As she got older, she engaged in dangerous drug and alcohol behavior and careless sex with a boy she thought “really liked” her, but whom she knew had a girlfriend in her same school.
And despite complaining about the bullying and stalking, Amanda made enough information public, on Facebook or otherwise, to allow herself to be stalked. Her Facebook profile wasn’t private enough to stop much of her peers’ cyber-bullying, and when Amanda decided to post her problems in a dramatic YouTube video rather than talking to her parents, therapist or friends, she seemed to be primarily soliciting attention.
Making Amanda the unfettered victim in this whole business seems, to me, to reinforce several bad behaviors. The least appropriate course of action is to take one’s own life, and since teens are usually looking to be heard, focusing so much attention on Amanda sends a loud and clear message that committing suicide can get teens the attention they crave.
This is especially dangerous because suicides, particularly among teens, ten
d to happen in clusters in which three or more teens take their lives in a row, influenced by the previous suicides of others.
The Boston Children’s Hospital blog states, “Although many factors account for suicide in teenagers, social modeling is an important one. Social modeling refers to the way an individual may conform their behavior to what they observe in others. This is particularly important in adolescent development.”
The danger of Amanda’s behavior being validated increases when she revealed that she cut herself. Cutting as means of self-mutilation works via social modeling as well. In 2010, Psychology Today called cutting a trend and wrote “Some adolescents report that [cutting] elicits a desired response from others in the social environment (e.g., support or an emotional reaction).”
Amanda surely is a victim – a victim of absentee parents, a pervert stalker, bullying at school and her own self-destructive behavior. But while Amanda’s death is nothing less than awful, it warrants a much bigger discussion than school bullying. Because of this, the anti-bullying campaign would be better served finding a less complicated circumstance – one in which school bullying is the dominant problem, but where self-harm and suicide don’t create a heroine.
– Liz Emery is a senior majoring in English with an emphasis in creative writing. Her column runs here every other Thursday. Comments may be sent to her at liz.emery@yahoo.com.