Ashley lives in Littleton, Colorado and has been growing up like any normal western state teen, being influenced by her peers as much as she’s influenced by her parents’ guidance. However, she never expected how invasive the Internet could be without her knowing about it or even having a say in the matter. In Ashley’s case, the bullying that occurred may seem benign, but it had the potential to be far more. Unknown to Ashley at the time, a classmate when she was 11 began taking photos of her. The images were then made part of a portfolio of information posted on the Internet with a fake social media page. The topic was Ashley and the website page was made to look as if Ashley posted everything herself. It was only through friends and third parties that Ashley became aware of the existence of the online information. The data was detailed as well; it included her school name, her home address, her family information, birthdays and more. Worse, all the data was set to be open to t...
In December 2007, Tina Meier founded the nonprofit Megan Meier Foundation. The non-profit was named in honour of Tina’s 13-year-old daughter who hanged herself in a bedroom closet in October 2006. Megan struggled with attention deficit disorder and depression in addition to issues with her weight. About five weeks before her death, a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans asked Megan to be friends on the social networking website MySpace. The two began communicating online regularly, although they never met in person or spoke on the phone. “Megan had a lifelong struggle with weight and self-esteem,” Tina said on the Foundation website. “And now she finally had a boy who she thought really thought she was pretty.”
ReplyDeleteIn mid-October, Josh began saying he didn’t want to be friends anymore, and the messages became more cruel on October 16, 2006, when Josh concluded by telling Megan, “The world would be a better place without you.” The cyberbullying escalated when additional classmates and friends on MySpace began writing disturbing messages and bulletins. Tina said on the Foundation website that it was about 20 minutes after Megan went to her room after leaving the computer that the mother found her daughter had hanged herself in her bedroom closet. Megan died the following day, three weeks before what would have been her 14th birthday. Many cyberbullying articles were written on what was revealed to be another cruel prank tuned into one of the most tragic suicide stories.