Amanda Todd- Is the world really ready to wake up?

By Nkongho Beteck on October 23, 2012

17-year-old Tesa Middlebrook, who had received a full ride to a four-year college in Arizona, was found hanging behind her high school’s football stadium.

In 2010, 18-year-old Rutgers University freshman, Tyler Clementi, killed himself after discovering his roommate had secretly used a webcam to stream him over the Internet having relations with another man.

Both students had been gravely bullied and both cases received a certain amount of media coverage. This coverage, however, was no where near the amount of attention that 15-year-old Amanda Todd received after she committed suicide Oct. 10.

A month before the attempt, Todd posted a YouTube video of her struggle with depression and suicidal attempts. The video garnered over 3 million views within the week of her death and social media outlets poured via tweets, Facebook and blogs to spread her message.

Along with these messages came the surplus of comments about how bullying was wrong. Why did the world choose to react the way it did to her particular death? One could argue that the video may have been a factor. But if she had never posted the video, would the world still have felt impacted by her story?

Teens Middlebrook and Clementi are just a few of those teens who have suffered under the hands of bullies and seem to have disappeared under the radar until the next big media story emerged. But these stories of bullying and teen suicide need to be told over and over again.

All forms of bullying which lead to a life being taken away are the same. They all have the power to degrade a human being into the darkest depths of believing that they are irrelevant in the world. Once the world realizes the impact of these thoughts and subsequent actions, the media frenzy trend will lead to actual action among people to combat the bullying issue.

I truly hope Amanda Todd’s story resonates beyond media comments and truly becomes an awareness where bullying is no longer tolerated. We cannot allow another person to die before we spread the message.