TORONTO – The death of a B.C. teenager has prompted a debate on how to end bullying among youth, online and in person. According to some experts, the focus should not be on the specific case of Amanda Todd, the 15-year-old found dead in a Port Coquitlam home.
Todd documented her story of an embarrassing photo being circulated to friends, family and schoolmates in a YouTube video posted five months before her suicide.
B.C. Premier Christy Clark spoke on Friday, emphasizing the bullies must be met with strict punishment and bullying should not be viewed as the same as any other dispute at school.
“In bullying, it’s not that kind of dispute. You’ve got a perpetrator, you’ve got a victim. The perpetrator needs to be punished and the victim needs to be supported and protected from further retribution from the bully. It’s a unique kind of dispute,” said Clark.
This crime and punishment strategy, according to some experts, is off the mark. According to Samantha Brennan, chair and associate professor of philosophy at the University of Western Ontario, the focus should be on much smaller interactions that youth can relate to.
For instance, if one person receives an illicit photo through digital media and passes it on to one friend, they may argue that what they did is “not that bad.” But their action may contribute to a larger collection of actions with horrific consequences.
Brennan said that in some cases “it might be true that each individual thing wasn’t that bad and true that the overall effect is quite horrible.”
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Started with a photo
In her video, Todd recounted her story of an embarrassing photo that was distributed online. When Todd was in seventh grade, she was asked to flash her chest by an anonymous user on chat.
“I can never get that photo back,” she wrote. “It’s out there forever.” The bullying continued for years, despite Todd switching schools to escape her harassers.
Near the end of the video, Todd wrote: “Every day I think why am I still here? … I have nobody. I need someone.”
While it may seem appropriate to talk about cases like Todd’s where cyberbullying led to suicide, these dramatic and extreme cases might not resonate with teenagers, according to Matthew Johnson, director of education at MediaSmarts, a non-profit organization focused on digital literacy.
“It’s important to remember that the vast majority of targets of cyberbullying do not commit suicide. And when interventions focus on the most dramatic, the most extreme possible results it really just makes it seem more remote to kids and easier for them to just tune the whole thing out,” said Johnson.
Broadening the discussion
Johnson also wants to broaden the discussion to include those receiving the messages or images, and potentially sending them to one other recipient.
And while it is important to remind teenagers to protect themselves and not post and send illicit photos of themselves through digital media, Johnson said we must approach cyberbullying and sexting as an ethical issue.
The majority of sexting cases occur in the context of a relationship and the messages or photos stay with the recipient, said Johnson.
“When things go wrong is when the recipient – or a third party who somehow gets access to the image – forwards it, they spread it,” he said.
Johnson said that schools need to teach students that when you receive an illicit photo or text “you have an ethical responsibility of how to deal with it.”
Smaller wrongs
Brennan said that the smaller moral wrongs, such as passing on an illicit photo to a friend, are more difficult to address. It’s more difficult to say when a smaller action is wrong and what makes it wrong.
“Both in terms of moral theory and in terms of teaching ethics in the classroom, we should focus on the smaller harms, because they’re the ones that we actually commit,” said Brennan.
“They may all be small moral wrongs, but they have horrible effects on individuals.”
Follow Heather on Twitter @heatherloney
With files from Postmedia News
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