Amanda Todd — A Victim Of Cyber Bullying

Please note! This essay has been submitted by a student.

The topic of cyber crimes is most often connected with crimes related to money or identity theft. People jump to the conclusion that cyber crimes have to be monetarily related, or that “important” cyber crimes are the ones that relate to monetary extortion or identity theft, even identity theft unrelated to financial gain. However, there is another category of cyber crimes that is just as dangerous and life threatening: cyber bullying. Cyber bullying can be anything, from offensive media posted about an individual to sextortion... anything that causes psychological harm to an individual through the use of the Internet. The case I researched is Amanda Todd, a Canadian teenager who committed suicide after vicious online attacks and sextortion. Her case was kept open after her suicide in 2012 and is finally close to being closed due to the January of 2014 arrest of Aydin Coban. The suspect was charged with extortion, Internet luring, and child pornography (The Canadian Press and Postmedia News, 2014). The background of Amanda Todd’s story, her anxiety, major depression, and panic attacks, the bullying she endured throughout her life, and the documented threats that she received are the research topics that I address throughout my paper. Also addressed is how governments’ attitudes toward cyber bullying have changed due to this case, from their idea that they do not owe victims any help to taking allegations of cyber bullying extremely seriously. One last research topic that I address is the efforts of different vigilantes and companies that led to the arrest of the predator.

Essay due? We'll write it for you!

Any subject

Min. 3-hour delivery

Pay if satisfied

GET YOUR PRICE

Enter Amanda Todd, a fifteen-year-old teenager from Canada. The YouTube video that she uploaded documenting via flashcards the sextortion, bullying, and harassment that she suffered went viral after her suicide. According to the documentary the fifth estate (2014) filmed, Todd’s fascination with the Internet started at an early age. She wanted to become famous. A majority of her friendships were formed on the Internet through miscellaneous chatrooms. Unfortunately, during one of those online conversations, she was coerced through flattery to flash her breasts, a mistake that would haunt her through the upcoming years. One of the many persons that saw this contacted her a year later through Facebook and demanded that she send him photos of herself or he would spread the screenshot of her breasts that he took to all her family and friends (Pendergrass & Wright, 2013). She refused and as a result, the picture was circulated. The man started another Facebook profile pretending to be a schoolboy and added friends from Todd’s school. After he accumulated a number of friends, he changed his profile picture to the picture of Todd’s breasts (estate, 2014). She started self-harming and her anxiety skyrocketed. She transferred schools, but the harassment grew steadily worse, especially after a “friendship” formed with another boy who had malicious intentions. After enduring intense humiliation, she attempted suicide by drinking bleach for the first time. However, this did nothing to ease the pain, in actually increased the torment she received. The torment from those in her real life and from her online stalker did not relent. According to conversations found by Facebook during their investigation, Todd stood up to her stalker in a Facebook conversation (Surbramaniam & Whalen, 2014). However, after multiple suicide attempts and a reliance on drugs to numb the pain, Todd successfully committed suicide.

Different key players, such as Facebook and a group of hackers known to the world as Anonymous, worked to uncover the man behind the social media mask that was tormenting Todd (Izri, 2012). Todd’s family asked their local law enforcement for help, but the local law enforcement claimed that they owed the family nothing and that Todd’s family was on it’s own in trying to end the harassment of their daughter. After Todd uploaded the YouTube video, people became increasingly aware of the dangers that she faced from this online stalker. Facebook did their best to track IP addresses and Facebook was the first to figure out the many Facebook personas that this stalker was using to harass multiple teenage girls online (estate, 2014).

Going back to the law enforcement officials’ attitudes about the online cyber bullying, this case is the case that shed light on just