Rest in peace Amanda. Bullied Teen Commits Suicide After Posting Last-Ditch Cry for Help on YouTube

[johnlucas]

2. The Internet has Cons as well as Pros. It amplifies schoolyard stuff exponentially

Kids were doing this kind of mean stuff forever but if you moved most likely all that dirt didn't follow you & you can start over.
Today, EVERYTHING is connected. EVERYTHING is transmitted.

If somebody doesn't like you for whatever reason, social networking through the internet can destroy a kid unprepared to deal with barrage.
I was born in 1976 & when I was in school through the 80s & early 90s it could never get this bad.

Kids didn't have smartphones that snap pictures & videos of you at any time whether you posed for it or not.
There was no YouTube to post those pictures & videos to the whole entire world.
There was no texting by cellphone/smartphone & no Facebook/Twitter or whatever else to create instant rumor-mongering & social shaming.

There were barely cellphones & they were giant monstrosities anyway. Mostly the few who could afford stuff like that would just have beepers & pagers.
All you had was that mean word of mouth & the bathroom walls to scratch a nasty message in.
People fought you with their fists more than not. A squad ganging up on you maybe.
No gun shoot outs at my school in my time. You might have had to worry about butterfly knifes sometimes (but they most likely would be confiscated).

It was very low tech. You had to face people & talk junk through word of mouth alone.
My school didn't even allow kids to have calculators much less cellphones.

Today anybody at any given time can snap a picture, record a video, post screeds on social networking sites, post pics & videos through online video/picture services & ruin a reputation in record time.
Everything you do & even DON'T do can be plastered all over the Internet to follow you no matter WHERE you go or what you do.

It's good for catching crooked politicians & crooked people but it also allows stalkers, slanderers & all the worst kind of people to put Scarlet Letters on you bigger than André the Giant.

It's hard for ADULTS to deal with crap like this.
Kids/Teens don't know how to deal with this.
And that's why you better think REALLY hard about allowing your kid to have a cellphone/smartphone, allowing them access to Facebook & stuff like that.
And even IF you block those things out, it doesn't mean that your kid won't SEEK them out like all kids do with forbidden things.
When they go to their friend's house & do the stuff they couldn't do at their own house.
When they sneak out & do things behind your back anyway.

But kids REALLY have a deficit when it comes to understanding consequences to actions.
And one mistake may be too late to correct in this overly-connected internet world we live in now.

Amanda Todd did what kids have always done. And her demeaners & bullies did what demeaners & bullies have always done.
The difference is the Internet & how it can follow you for life.

The truth is once kids get to teen level you're not going to be able to protect them from all this.
You won't be able to immunize them to all this. They're going to sneak out & find a way.
Even IF they don't do anything, that same ignorant schoolyard crap can be immortalized by the Internet.

Best to teach kids how to defy conformity & learn to live with the world against you.
How to be one that goes against the grain & can weather the storms of social shaming & rumor-mongering.
It doesn't matter what your kid does, when the other kids want to demonize you, you will be demonized.
Teach your kids how to handle the demonization & defy it.

So sad for Amanda Todd.
High school is meaningless. She shouldn't have thought it was the end of the world because it wasn't.
I wish I could have told her these words before she took her life.
John Lucas