Another American teen has tragically cut their life short. According to the New York Times, Rebecca Sedwick of Lakeland, Fla. committed suicide last week at only 12 years old after jumping off a high ledge at an abandoned cement plant near her home. What drove Sedwick to this point appeared to be a vicious array of cyber bullying that followed her from one school to the next. The hateful messages were coming from a variety of applications, such as Kik Messenger, ask.fm and Voxer. Over 15 of Sedwick’s peers were asking her questions like, “Why are you still alive?” and “Can u die please?” Issues started arising last year over a boy that Rebecca was seeing.
This story is absolutely heartbreaking. Sedwick wasn’t even out of middle school. She had a future that she will never see due to the cruelty of others. There is no excuse for bullying, and it’s hard to imagine that people so young could wish death on one of their peers.
Online, Rebecca wasn’t secretive about the fact that she was suffering, posting photos of herself with razor blades on her arms and her head resting on a railroad track, according to ABC News. After looking through her mobile devices, it was discovered that there were some terrifying searches, such as “How many Advil do you have to take to die?” and “How many over-the-counter drugs do you take to die?” While her family sought to get her help in the past, they were unaware of how badly Sedwick wanted to end her life. “Maybe she thought she could handle it on her own,” Tricia Norman, Seddwick’s mother, said. Sedwick also was hospitalized and given counseling when she began to cut herself. At first, the treatment seemed to be working, since she was making a turn-around, seeming vibrant and happy, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
“I had no reason to even think that anything was going on,” Norman told the New York Times. “She was laughing and joking…”
An incident like this might leave one wondering if this tragedy could have been prevented. While the answer is unclear, it is known that when the bullying started, Sedwick’s family made numerous efforts to help her.
“I don’t know one way or another if Rebecca’s death could’ve been prevented,” said UT journalism professor Lance Speere, who reported the incident with the New York Times. “The mother was doing a lot to help her daughter, bringing [the bullying] to the attention of the school, pulling her daughter out and home schooling, limiting social media use and enrolling her in another school.”
Sedwick’s situation is fairly familiar to me. Since I’ve been battling depression since I was 13, only a year older than she, I know how it feels to want an escape. Back when I was in middle school, I searched for similar topics online, just hoping that I could find a way out. Like Sedwick, I acted normal around my family, trying to show that nothing was wrong because I didn’t want them to worry. My parents had no idea that I was contemplating suicide. Judging from my own experience, Sedwick may have kept her depression hidden from her family for the same reason I did, but we will never know.
It is clear that Sedwick’s family did just about everything they could to help their daughter. What could have helped prevent her depression and the bullying? Focus should be placed on the bullies themselves and the messaging applications.
Research has shown how serious cyberbullying can affect the young adult population. “Bullying statistics show that cyber bullying is a serious problem among teens,” as reported by bullyingstatistics.com. “It can lead to anxiety, depression, and even suicide.” According to the site, one in three young people have been threatened online, and over 25 percent of teens have been bullied from their cell phones or computers. The Hartford County Examiner reported that only one in 10 teens tell their parents if they have been a victim of cyberbullying, and fewer than one in five cyberbullying incidents have been reported to law enforcement. After doing a number of surveys, the Cyberbullying Research Center found that cyberbullying victims are more likely to have low self-esteem. Considering all of this, it is likely that the students who were cyberbullying Sedwick had a huge impact on her emotionally.
The platforms through which the bullies harassed Sedwick are under scrutiny as well. Latvian based ask.fm was already faced with suspicion after it was linked to numerous suicides in young teens, especially in the United Kingdom. The Guardian reported that in England, 14-year-old Hannah Smith took her life “after suffering months of abuse on the website.” Kierah Gowers, a 12-year-old from the UK, was made a target on ask.fm. She received horrifying messages such as “You’re a slag, there is no point in you being alive…I honestly think the world would be a much better place if you were gone,” and “If you don’t kill yourself now I will do it for you amen.” Currently, there are petitions in Britain as well as the U.S. to make the site enact stricter moderation regarding bullying, which clearly needs to be done. Words cannot only hurt, but be detrimental to a person’s health. If bullying can’t be stopped completely, the least these websites can do is monitor more closely and prevent these hateful messages from being sent.
“I suppose anyone could probably surmise that if there had never been any bullying at all, then this would have never happened,” Speere said.
At the moment, officials are trying to see if they can apply charges to the 15 girls who bullied Sedwick. “Florida has a school anti-bullying statute that is intended to guard against such harassment,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Officials have seized the phones and laptops of Rebecca’s friends and former friends for the investigation into her death.”
The suicide of Sedwick is one of many where online bullying was a huge contributing factor. No person should tell another to end their life. Hopefully the bullies will come to fully understand the impact of their hurtful statements.
Jessica Forte can be reached at jessica.forte@spartans.ut.edu