1. Good morning everybody.…. I would like to talk about something that’s happening nowadays on the
internet and its called cyber bullying. We know what the word bully means right? It means being
tormented by vicious people.
In order to understand what im going to talk about I will take an example of a teenager who was only 12
years old and took her own life, in other words she committed suicide. Being 12 years old is an age of
innocence and also an age whereby a teenager can be exploited by adults for the wrong intention and
purposes.
Now, what happened to Amanda Todd, she was a brilliant and beautiful 12 years old teenager and she
had all her life ahead of her. Being 12 and being innocent and beautiful in other word she was just like a
flower starting to bloom. You know when a flower starts to bloom you can see all the beauty in that
flower.
The history of Amanda Todd goes as follows:
For a 12 year old girl in a western country, she was already acquainted to night life and boyfriends.
Basically, social things that for a 12 year old girl in an eastern world would not normally be associated
with.
She was given lots of praises and attention like ‘you’re so beautiful’ and all these type of things that she
got so hooked to. Being in that situation where she was always praised, she was asked to flash and her
pictures got taken. In that instance, an being ignorant for that age, she thought nothing bad of it and
trusted her boyfriend.
1 year passed, and suddenly she received a message on facebook from a guy whom she didn’t know
and asked her to put on a show *exp*. Otherwise, all her naked pictures taken previously by her ex
boyfriend would go on the social network like facebook and twitter. Of course, she was shocked and
refused. As it goes, the threat from the mysterious guy came true and all her naked pictures were
online.
She approached the police and lodged major complaints and nothing could stop her naked pictures from
being published on the internet. At one point, a picture of her breast was used by the cyber stalker as
his profile picture.
For 8 years, AT moved from city to city and from school to school and that did not stop her to be
constantly being cyber bullied. She had less and less friends and she was becoming publicly known as
the cyber flasher. In the end she was alone and the only friends around her were her doctors and
nurses attending to her depressions.
And finally on October 10, 2012, she could not live anymore with all these cyber bullying as these were
bringing shame to her parents and relatives for too long. She felt so so alone and decided to take her own
life on that very day at her home in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada.
The moral behind this tragic event is that we all should be aware how these social networks can be of
benefit if we know how to use it, otherwise, they can be our worse enemy and nightmares.
2. More importantly, parents and teachers should be aware of such consequences and should closely bring
up such topics to teenagers so as to keep them on the tip of their toes.
In conclusion I would like to pass the message to all my friends out there, be careful and tread carefully
with all these social networks on the internet and who you trust. Open your eyes and ears and remember
that anybody can always track us down where we are and who our closest friends are as we tend to be to
open by giving too much of information about ourselves on these cyber social networks such as facebook
and twitter.