National Post (National Edition)
Cyberbullying in Canada: ‘the trends are spiking’
EXPERTS CALLING FOR GREATER EMPATHY, COMMUNICATION
In October, a star in the constellation Auriga was named Amanda’s Snowflake Star of Hope, a celestial legacy for B.C. teen Amanda Todd, who has become one of the tragic faces of cyberbullying in Canada.
With the help of public donations, Amanda’s mother, Carol Todd, had the star at the edge of the Milky Way named for her daughter’s birthday last month. It would have been Amanda’s 20th.
In what became a global story, Amanda took her own life in October, 2012, desperate to escape a torrent of online bullying she endured after being maliciously targeted through video chat when she was in Grade 7.
A month before her death, she posted a video on YouTube using flash cards to tell her “never-ending story” of abuse at the hands of a faceless assailant who blackmailed and harassed her for years after convincing the teen to remove her top online.
After Amanda’s death, the video went viral, garnering some 23 million views and launching a Canada-wide debate on cyberbullying. Just seven months later, Nova Scotia’s Rehtaeh Parsons attempted to hang herself at her Dartmouth home, later dying in hospital, after nude photos of the teen were widely circulated.
Four years after Amanda’s death, the wounds are still healing for her mother, who has become an advocate for anti-bullying education.
“As much as I taught Amanda how to use technology, I realize now I didn’t understand a lot of things,” said Todd from her Port Coquitlam, B.C., home.
“It’s been four years since Amanda’s death and we’ve come a ways, but there’s always a lot of work that needs to be done.” Last March, Bill C-13 brought the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act into law, making it illegal to share intimate images without consent. However, critics decried sweeping new surveillance powers for law enforcement included in the legislation.
As lawmakers wrangle with how to target abusers, most experts have zeroed in on the importance of simply communicating better with young people, instilling empathy, and arming them with the knowledge to avoid falling victim to online predators.
While it’s easy to think of bullies who troll social-media networks as villains, generally speaking, particularly with children, they’re indistinguishable from their victims, said Sameer Hinduja, a criminology professor at Florida Atlantic University and codirector of the Cyberbullying Research Center, a U.S.-based hub providing resources and tools to combat cyberbullying. “The aggressors tend to be peers of their victims and they’re often struggling in the same ways,” Hinduja said.
A study conducted by the group this year surveying some 5,700 students aged 12 to 17 found that about one-third admitted to being cyberbullied at some point in their lives. Over the course of 30 days, a quarter of those surveyed said they had been the victim of more than one form of online abuse, ranging from mean comments and rumours to threats and hurtful images or videos.
Last year, Telus WISE (Wise Internet and Smartphone Education), a free multi-media program offered by the Vancouverbased telecommunications giant, partnered with MediaSmarts and PREVNet in an effort to determine the extent of the problem in Canada. It found that in the four weeks prior to the survey, 42 per cent of youths had been cyberbullied and another 60 per cent said they had witnessed others who had been targeted by cyberbullies.
Encouragingly, 71 per cent who witnessed cyberbullying said they did something to intervene.
The Telus program grew out of a sense of responsibility to those who access the Internet from the company’s platforms, said director Shelly Smith.
Since its launch in 2013, the program has been attempting to better educate not only young people but their parents, she said.
“We found parents often don’t know how to even broach these discussions,” she said.
The desire for cyberbullying education is strong and growing, said Const. Carter Duchesney, a cybercrimes education officer with the Calgary Police Service. So far in 2016, the veteran officer has delivered 119 presentations to schools, reaching some 20,000 students, parents and educators.
“Definitely the trends are spiking,” Duchesney said. “The frequency and time young people are spending on their devices is the biggest part of that trend. It’s getting more powerful and more insidious all the time.”
And well-meaning parents, afraid of violating their children’s privacy, may be compounding the problem.
“I still get a lot of resistance when I say ‘it’s your device, and you’re providing your child with access to the Internet,’ ” he said. “You need to be involved and dole out responsibility as they earn it.”
Weeks after Amanda committed suicide, Mackenzie Murphy of Airdrie, Alta. — another teen struggling to deal with anonymous attacks and a feeling that she had been cast out of an online community that had become a central part of her world — tried to kill herself.
Now 17, and recently crowned Miss Teen Alberta American Beauty, Murphy recalls the first time she was bullied over the Internet.
“It started when I was in Grade 5, with just people writing instant messages, and I’d hear about the things people would write about me. Somebody wrote, ‘I’m going to kill her,’ ” she said.
“They told me I’m worthless, that no one’s ever going to love me,” Murphy said. “Those feelings of helplessness and not having any idea why you’re being attacked — it’s hard. I self-harmed and I engaged in unhealthy things just to dull the pain.”
With the help of her mother and friends, Murphy survived, getting help for her mental illness and learning to cope with her inner pain.
In 2013, less than a year after attempting suicide, the teen successfully lobbied Airdrie’s city council to adopt an anti-bullying bylaw, which levies fines against aggressors.
Today, Murphy says she’s proud to label herself a survivor, and hopes her experience will show others they can rise above the pain and even become empowered by it.
“I think survivor is such an empowering word. I’m proud to call myself a survivor.”