The Tragedy of Being Known After Death - The Amanda Todd Story

15-year-old Vancouver teen Amanda Todd.

Teenagers make a lot of dumb choices. Screwing up is part of growing up. But it has never been this: a world where the errors of youth are remembered for eternity. That potential was horribly realized for Amanda Todd, a teen from Vancouver who committed suicide last week after years of persistent bullying, both on and offline. She was only 15.

Amanda's death came about five weeks after she posted a video online describing what happened to her since she was a Grade 8 student. On Friday, news of her death received wide media coverage around the world. And the video she uploaded on YouTube went viral.

As is common in these times, several tributes and memorial sites were set up on Facebook and other social media sites. The girl who had told the world in her video, "I have nobody. I need someone," had the support in death she never believed she had in life. Funny how much of a difference can make when you die.

What stands out about Amanda’s story is how many layers of internet nightmare it illustrates...and how brilliantly she tells it. Just a couple of weeks ago, Amanda made the video, holding a stack of cue cards to tell her story. She stood silently behind, letting the script of her life unfold, unable to interfere. The result is heartbreaking, and enormously powerful. I have never seen a stronger message about the dangers of the things teenagers do online: chatting with strangers, flashing their bodies, making themselves vulnerable to people who don’t know them—or don’t care about them. 

Of course there are questions: Is this the whole story? What was going on at home? Was anyone helping Amanda manage this? Did someone suggest she take a break from social media for awhile? None of us can possibly know the details of Amanda’s story. But what is clear from watching her heartbreaking video, and reading about the tragic aftermath is that the dangers of bullying are very real, and they’re not going anywhere- not unless a whole lot of something is done about it.

What that something is is not entirely clear. But I’d say communication is a good start. There are a lot of difficult subjects raised, but they are the very ones teens need to know about to avoid similar problems. Amanda shows what the risks really are more clearly than any adult’s description ever could. I’m so sorry this happened to Amanda Todd and her family.  I hope we can somehow use her memory to help keep other kids safer from this kind of suffering.

Friends and family have been sending their condolences to a Facebook page titled Rest In Paradise Amanda Michelle Todd, which has nearly 23,000 likes at the time of this article. The wall features countless messages of condolence.

This is her story that got passed along through Twitter.

[Huffington Post, Vancouver Sun]

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