Social Media Kills People

In 2014 a cyberbullying study found that an astounding 52 percent of teens reported being cyberbullied over social media. I believe that social media sites could be doing more to protect their users from being cyber bullied online by paying a little more attention to what teens say and do online. If social media sites prevented cyber bullying from continuing on, then the internet and home life would be a safer place because it would prevent suicides from happening. All that social media sites would have to do is restrict commenting or keep a closer eye on what teenagers are doing on their sites.

Screenshot from Facebook

 Media sites have just now begun, in the past two years, cracking down on cyberbullying. Facebook has put new regulations on their site where teens can now report what is going on and Facebook will take a closer look on what has been reported. Unfortunately for one cyberbully victim, these changes came too late. October 16th 2013, two girls were arrested because they posted mean comments on Facebook about another girl. They drove her so mad that she killed herself by jumping off a silo in an abandoned concrete factory. The victim's name was Rebecca Sedwick. The two bullies were only twelve and fourteen years old. After Rebecca committed suicide, the fourteen year old girl said, �Yes, I bullied Rebecca, and she killed herself but I don't give a - and you can add the last word yourself.� Apparently, Rebecca and the fourteen year old girl had a little disagreement when Rebecca started dating the fourteen year old-s ex-boyfriend. That is when the cyberbullying and physical fights started to happen. Luckily her mom was smart and moved Rebecca to another school, but that didn�t help because the two girls could still attack her using social media online. This cyberbullying went on for over a year until Rebecca couldn�t take it anymore and she committed suicide. After Rebecca's death, Facebook still didn�t do anything; they just said that you can never get away from bullying now because of the internet. With the help of social media sites, we could make online a safer and better environment. There could be regulations on the cruel actions going on everyday around us. Social media could ban comments, they could check to see if people are following their community guidelines and terms of service and if they are not, then their account should be shut down as soon as possible.

"Shots of me" app logo
from "Wikimedia"

A popular social media site Ask.fm has anonymous commenting so if you post a nasty threat and send it to a person, they have no idea who you are. Ilija Terebin, who is the chef excetutive of Ask.fm, says that she understands that they need to take special care of their users and they say that they take that responsibility extremely seriously. Other anti-bullying groups say that there should be a restriction on social media where social media should be so restricted that it�s almost not there anymore. I don�t think that it should go that far, but social media sites do need to acknowledge the possibility that if you are posting anonymously, kids and teenagers can get emotionally scarred and might even take their own life. I think social media sites should go as far as disabling comments and not allowing anonymous commenting. For example, one social media site, called, �Shots of me� a photo posting app that disables commenting which is run by John Shahidi says that he disables it because it is better and has less drama for teens. This is a perfect example of a social media site that understand the problems of having comments enabled. They know that it can cause cyberbullying and suicide, so they disable it knowing that they might have saved a life.


In fact, people do disagree with my opinion that social media sites could do a better job of protecting teenagers from cyberbullying. They blame the kids for being immature and stupid, not the social media sites. Kate Harding author of �Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere� says that social networking should not to be blamed for cyber bullying because it is only a medium for teenagers to wage their wars. She blames the educators and parents who should teach students responsible online behavior. She believes that Facebook should not take the blame for cruel cyber bullying because they could not have done anything to stop the one-million children on Facebook alone were harassed in 2011 as reported by Consumer reports.

I disagree with these statements because in one of the major cases of cyberbullying history, a life could have been saved if Facebook got involved in helping find the killer. This major case was about Amanda Todd. The man started stalking her from Amanda�s webcam at just eleven years old. Then one night Amanda made a terrible mistake, she flashed in front of 200 people. The man that had been stalking her took a picture then proceeded to blackmail her with them over Facebook. He told her to flash again for him 2 times or he would leak these pictures to her friends and family over Facebook. She only flashed for him once, so he made a Facebook account of just her and her nudes and sent the link to everyone in Amanda's contact list on Facebook. If Facebook had made the report abuse button before this happened to Amanda, and actually paid attention to the things that people report abuse on, then this could have stopped immediately. It was only after Amanda's death on October 10th 2012, that Facebook tried to intervene and stop the man by contacting the police and showing them all the conversations Amanda and the man had before her death.

Over the years the Internet and social media have influenced suicide-related behavior, and if social media paid closer attention to the risks then maybe they could save a few lives and cyberbullying from continuing on. Then, the internet and home life would be a safer place because parents and kids could feel like they weren't being bullied 24/7. The only thing that social media sites would have to do is hire more people to check over their site to make sure there is no cruel and mean behavior going on. If they encounter this behavior, then they should talk to the owner of the account and make sure they know they are being watched.

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Conclusion, Updated May 28th, 2015

Internet and home life would be so much safer and happier if we all knew that kids were not being cyber bullying and bullied when parents aren't watching. So, If social media sites prevented cyber bullying from continuing on, then the internet and home life would be a safer place. I learned that cyber bullying really does affect others in their daily life even more than before. Many people agree with me that it should be taken more seriously and they are glad I wrote my blog about this topic to raise awareness in a student point of view. I think my argument was very deep and hit them hard and hopefully made them understand that I didn't just do this for a grade. I hope they realize that I really do care about the thousands of kids getting cyber bullied every day and not being cared for. With all the comments that my peer have left, I have discovered many links that I missed out on that would have fit in perfectly in my blog. Although, with those resources and new articles that I read, I learned a lot more and really understood my topic even more. My comments did not change my mind because everyone agreed with me and where I stood on my topic.They definitely clarified my thinking and made me look at my point of view in many different ways by asking me questions I had to really think and sometimes do further research, for an answer. Blogging was so much fun and really made me step into the shoes of some of the kids that don�t have a very fortunate life and I really enjoyed writing about how I could possibly make a difference in their lives by reinstating the issue at hand.

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