Beginning in 2009, eleven year old Amanda Todd began to be stalked, bullied, and blackmailed by a dutch man who was using various aliases. Although her parents had her passwords and occasionally checked up on her online activity, Todd initially stayed ahead of her parents by using codes to chat with her friends online. CBC’s The Fifth Estate discussed BlogTV, one of the sites where Todd’s infamous story began: It’s a place where people can meet and move on. But there’s also a dark backdrop to the glare of a webcam. [Pedophiles] wanted to do more than talk to the girls, they wanted to see the them in the flesh. Some girls needed to be coaxed, while others willingly played along, exploring their own budding sexuality. Either way, there was a …show more content…
She made the decision to lift her shirt and flashed her breasts for the camera and her audience. A dutch man, who was using an alias took the picture and threatened to spread it if Todd didn’t continue to send him sexual content. Todd refused, and the picture was posted on a pornography site, and a link was sent to Todd’s Facebook friends, including Todd’s mother. When Todd returned to school, she was tormented by bullying. Although Todd’s parents took the issue to the police, the threats weren’t taken seriously. Facebook launched their own investigation, and found that the man who was tormenting Todd was highly skilled in identity obfuscation and had been using over ninety different screen names, eighty different Facebook accounts, and had already blackmailed seventy-five victims. In October 2012, fifteen year old Todd killed herself. Todd’s heartbreaking story went viral, and brought attention to the fact that while social media can be a good influence for teens by allowing their communication skills to flourish, and by putting information at their fingertips, there are definitely huge downfalls as well, which often times go overlooked by parents and guardians; there’s a perceived difference between digital life and real life, probably due to a lack of real-life consequence for actions taken through screens. Because of this, teens are being immersed in a world of cyberbullying and sexting, and don’t know how to handle