Bullying: The Amanda Todd Story

Bullying: The Amanda Todd Story

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Bullying: The Amanda Todd Story

The distinctive pattern of humiliating and harming others and most commonly to the people who are seemingly smaller, younger, weaker or more vulnerable than the one who bullies is known as bullying. It is not included in the aggression of garden-variety nature but is a repeated and deliberate attempt of causing harm to more vulnerable people. This behavioral style is of more durable nature because mostly at first bullies achieve what they desired. According to the report published by the NCES (National Center for Education Statistics) and BJS (Bureau of Justice Statistics), between 1 out of 4 students in America reports about bullying at school(Cohen et al., 2014). Amanda Todd a 15-year-old Canadian girl faced the bully and committed suicide later year. She was subjected to constant cyberbullying and one case of physical bullying.

According to National Centre Against Bullying defines cyberbullying as a behavior that can be overt or covert by getting aid from digital technologies such as smartphones, computers, texts, social media, websites and other platforms online available(Types Of Bullying, 2019). It can include hurtful and abusive posts or emails, videos or images, exclusion of others deliberately online, rumors and nasty gossips, and online imitation of others using the log in of theirs. While physical bullying includes pinching, tripping, kicking, pushing, hitting or damaging property. When at start Amanda go to online for meeting strangers, she was told to expose herself and consequently her snap is taken. She was later blackmailed by the man that if she did not agrees to what blackmailer demands, her nude pictures would be sent to her family and friends. Eventually, he leaked her photo online. She then moved to a new school to avoid verbal bullying at her previous school

Later the blackmailer on social media post her picture as his profile picture and contacts her new classmates. She was again verbally bullied at her new school and left school for the second time. Later in need of a friend, she met an old guy who invited Amanda to his house and had sex with her. The week later that old guy girlfriend and 15 boys group who confronted her at school shout verbal insults with the man's girlfriend punching her several times. After that event, she drank bleach in a suicide attempt but survived.

Amanda changed her school several times as a consequence of bullying but later find out it to be no solution. She goes on depressing episodes and took anti-depressants to cope with the situation. She cut herself on the forearm and even go to an extreme measure of committing suicide by drinking bleach and at other time taking pills overdosage

Prevention program for teachers at school, certain measures are required to stop bullying by fellow students(Apa.org, 2019). Teachers must be observant and take any case of bullying seriously although bullying happens mostly outside the classroom. If a case of bullying happens in the classroom, teachers must intervene and tell the authorities about the incident. Involve parents in the matter. Parents, school administrators, and teachers can help teach skills to the students and engage them in positive behavior to intervene in bullying when happened. If bullying cause students to be isolated, teachers should try to encourage friendship with the bullied student.

The most important part is played by the parents of the child. They should engage them in the conversation of open-ended nature and tell them that they would help her in any circumstances. They should take control of the child's computer usage. Monitor them and check their text messages. Her parents should report all message of threatening nature to police and make documents of any email, post and text messages.

When I was in high school, most of the bullying is of verbal and physical nature which is now changed to cyberbullying and social exclusion. If verbal bullying or physical bully happens one can leave the place but it would be of no help if cyber bully happens because the world is now a global village with having its consequences with it.

Bullying behavior is a product of children upbringing without parent's knowledge that they are exposing them. A link is found between bullying behavior and bully child-parent behavior when they try to use threats and spanking to control their children behavior. As the self-esteem at home is already been low, they felt bad about themselves and bully with the same manners to others. So bullying can be prevented at home if children assertive behavior is enhanced and firm foundations are enhanced.

References

(2019). Apa.org. Retrieved 12 May 2019, from https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/bullying

Cohen, R., Lam, D. Y., Agarwal, N., Cormier, M., Jagdev, J., Jin, T., ... & Sun, W. (2014). Using computer technology to address the problem of cyberbullying. ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, 44(2), 52-61.

Types Of Bullying | National Centre Against Bullying. (2019). Ncab.org.au. Retrieved 12 May 2019, from https://www.ncab.org.au/bullying-advice/bullying-for-parents/types-of-bullying/