Twelve year old Rebecca Sedwick committed
suicide after several months of cyber bullying by her peers. The comments
directed towards her were abusive to the point of calling for Sedwick to end
her own life. The topic of cyber bullying has been brought up in class before,
and I don’t think it is particularly unique to this case that the victim knew
the bullies personally.
Dissociative anonymity probably
does not play as large as a role in this as the identities of the abusers were
probably known to Sedwick. Invisibility probably played a much larger role.
While represented through their online profiles, the abusers weren’t seen in a
physical space. This probably allowed them to be bolder in their actions. Suler
writes that invisibility plays a role even when all of the identities of the
users are known. Because the abusers could not be seen they acted out further.
Also, they do not see Sedwick while taunting and abusing her, so they probably
felt little to no empathy for their actions.
Dissociative imagination plays a
large role in this crime. The bullies probably assumed their bullying as
harmless fun. They probably also did not feel that the consequences of their
words were real because they perceive the internet as separate from reality. As
we have discussed in class, however, actions on the internet do have real world
consequences. This bullying ultimately culminated in Rebecca Sedwick’s suicide.
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