How many more people can we lose from committing suicide due to bullying? Suicide is the 3rd killer of teens behind car accidents and homicides, where 4,500 teens commit suicide each year. Also 43 percent of kids have been bullied online and 25 percent have seen it twice or more.
The problem about the laws about cyberbullying for schools, which 49 of the 50 states have approved is the bullies are not easy to identify. A lot of the cyberbullying happens at home and not inside a school.
A 12 year old in Lakeland, Florida, Rebecca Sedwick committed suicide. When the police and her parents looked at her phone, and they saw her profile name was “That Dead Girl.” The parents said that she was being cyberbullied for over a year and a half. The bullying got bad enough where she started cutting her arms and legs. When they saw her dead, she had marks all over her arms and legs. When she she got home from her school, she told her mom how she was not worth anything. When they found her phone, she was getting notifications from Ask. FM, Kik, and Instagram. The deputies also saw pictures of razor blades and fresh cut wounds on her camera roll.
Another suicide story is Megan Meier. She was walking with her mom and all of a sudden she saw this “hot” boy named Josh, who was 16. He contacted her on MySpace and her mom was very strict about who she had as friends on her social media apps. Then she did not want to be friends with this girl, who had been her friend for years, because she wanted to be friends with Josh instead of her because her friend did not like Josh. Her friend was Josh’s friend apparently. She went to her computer once and on her MySpace, she had a message from Josh, it said, “I don't know if I want to be friends with you anymore because I've heard that you are not very nice to your friends.” She replied back and said what are you talking about? Her mom found out that you had to be 14 to have a MySpace account, but Megan was 13. When she turned 14 her mom let her get her account back. Her parents made her make her account private and her parents had to know the password. A couple of weeks later her mom checked her account and there were a lot of mean messages from Josh and other friends. When she was not at school because she was sick, she called her mom and said that they were posting surveys about her. There were comments saying that she was a slut and she was fat. A couple of weeks later her mom noticed that Megan was being very quiet that day and had not seen her. When she went in her room, there was nothing in there. When she opened the closet door she saw Megan hanging there dead.
One of the solutions for cyberbullying is that parents should be checking their children’s social media and text messages more often. Megan and Rebecca’s parents said they would rather have their child hate them, than not being able to see their daughters again. Another solution is to monitor your child’s electronic time, for instance no phones or devices in the child’s room at night. Homework needs to be finished before playing videogames, going on Facebook, Snapchat etc. My last solution is you can’t be on phones while eating with your family.
In conclusion we need to end cyberbullying because we are losing a lot of people due to cyberbullying. Megan Meier and Rebecca Sedwick’s stories are only two of the many suicides due to cyberbullying. I think that my solutions would help because they are all trying to reduce the time that we are on Social Media and the less time we spend on it, the less people will be on it.