Six Heart Wrenching Cyber Bullying Suicides
Trigger warning: Suicide
As per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — US (CDC), there are 5,500 suicides every year in the age group 5–24. Almost 40% of deaths in the age group 10–24 account to suicides. Even in age group 1–9 suicide causes 31.5% of all deaths.
How many of these unfortunate deaths are due to cyberbullying? We do not know exactly. But more than one out of every five (20.8%) students report being bullied, as per National Center for Educational Statistics, 2016.
Bullied youth suffer the most serious repercussions and are at greater risk for mental health, depression, anxiety, and sleep difficulties (Source:CDC).
We can connect the dots. But numbers are not enough. In the following article, we will share some of the emotional experiences that pushed six young people towards suicide. By telling their stories, we strive to honor them and their families and look towards a day where we can prevent such unfortunate events.
Amanda Todd, 15 years old, Canada — committed suicide by hanging herself
“Every day I think ‘Why I am Still Here’.” These are the words of Amanda Todd who committed suicide after she was harassed and bullied on the internet for two years.
Amanda flashed her breasts to a stranger on a networking website. That stranger then started blackmailing her. Every time she changed school, he made a fake Facebook account with her bare breasts photo as the profile picture. He sent friend requests to other students pretending that he was going to join the school. Once he was part of the network, he told everyone that it was Amanda’s photo. This alienated her from the community around her and friends stopped talking to her, schoolmates bullied her.
She committed suicide two years later after that flashing incident.
This video of her life story via flash cards is all that is left now.
Rebecca Ann Sedwick, 12 years old, Miami — committed suicide by jumping from a tower
Rebecca was being harassed and bullied by her schoolmates both in school and over social media platforms. When her mother learned of the first incidents she took her phone away and deleted her Facebook account. Rebecca joined alternate platforms, Kik, Voxer, ask.fm, without her mother’s knowledge.
On the other platforms Rebecca started receiving similar hateful messages such as “Why are you still alive?”, “You’re ugly”, “Can u die”. She did not share these messages with her mother from fear that she would have her loose her phone privileges .
One day, instead of walking to the school, she walked to the nearby cement plant, climbed its barbed wire fence, up one of the towers, and jumped.
Before she jumped, she had changed her username on Kik messenger as “That Dead Girl”.
George Hessay, 15 years old, UK — committed suicide by hanging himself
While looking for personal feedback on an anonymous feedback website, Sayat.me, George received offensive comments about himself.
He hung himself on a Thursday. As a result, the website was put down for a day and it went live again on Friday.
According to The Sun, one of his memorial messages read, “Can’t believe you have gone, you were so funny and kind, we will miss you so much. Fly high angel.”
Jessica Logan, 18 years old, Ohio — committed suicide by hanging herself
After their break up, Jessica’s boyfriend sent her nude photo to students their school and many neighboring schools. Students started calling her a “whore” and a “slut”. The cyberbullying continued through Facebook, Myspace, and other social media platforms.
Jessica appeared on TV in an interview to share her story so that no one else had to go through what she was facing.
While everyone thought she was getting better, two months after that interview, Jessica committed suicide by hanging herself in her bedroom.
Hope Sitwell, 13 years old, Florida — committed suicide by hanging herself
Hope suffered though events very similar to Jessica’s. After a private messaging session, her boyfriend sent her bare-breasted photo to other students from her school and many others. Students started calling her by offensive names and even started a “Hope Hater Page” on MySpace.
Late one evening after a family dinner, Hope hung herself with her favorite scarfs in her bedroom.
The bullying continued after her death with comments such as, “Did Hope really kill herself?’ ‘I can’t believe that whore did that”.
Brandy Vela, 18 years old, Texas — committed suicide by shooting herself
Schoolmates made fun of Brandy Vela’s weight.
Brandy received abusive text messages from an untraceable application for months. Bullies created dating websites of her and wrote that she was ready to provide free sex. The cyberbullying occurred on many platforms, including Snapchat, Instagram.
No matter how many times Brandy changed her phone number, bullies found her.
She sent an email to her family that she was going to commit suicide. They ran back home to find Brandy with a gun pointing to her chest.
Ignoring her pleading parents and sister, she shot herself.
These are painful, heartbreaking and very real suicide tales and all can be attributed to Cyberbullying.
All these stories paint a very real and somber picture — as a society we have fully adopted the use of smartphones and social media into the fabric of our daily lives. In its best uses social media can provide connectivity. In its worse it provides a breeding ground for anonymous attacks and harassment. We failed or were unable to pre-analyze the negative impacts, especially on the youth.
It is time to build a solution to combat Cyberbullying. And its time we used technology to do the heavy lifting.
Originally published at blog.trudyapp.com on January 19, 2018.
