Bully Beatdown

Bully Beatdown
On October 7th, 2003, Ryan Patrick Halligan was found hanging in the bathroom of his parent’s home.   The suicide was a result of bullying from his classmates in real life, and cyber bullying.   He was only 13 years old. “It’s estimated that nearly 30% — or 5.7 million children — are involved in bullying, as victims, perpetrators, or both. Studies have found that 15 to 25% of students in the U.S. are bullied, and 15 to 20% bully others” (Sognonvi, 1).   Bullying has become a serious worldwide epidemic that seems to be taken too lightly.  
Though most victims suffer from the common verbal bullying, cyber bullying seems to be the one that causes the most suicides. "’Cyber bullying’ is when a child, preteen or teen is tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted by another child, preteen or teen using the Internet, interactive and digital technologies or mobile phones” (1).   As the modern era continues, cyber bullying is on the rise.   Many teens take advantage of technology and social networking and use these tools to put down their peers.   They have the belief that they are invincible and will not receive harsh punishment if the nasty comments are online.   They also may believe that if the comments or insults are not directly in person then it is like it never happened.
Cyber bullying is what killed Megan Meier.   According to ABCNews.com, the mother of a former friend of Megan’s believed Megan was saying rude comments about her daughter.   Instead of approaching Megan or her mother herself, she decided to make a fake MySpace account and pose as a good looking young boy named Josh Evans, and befriend Megan to see if she would reveal anything.   Evans would compliment Megan and soon began an online friendship.   Over the course of a month, Evans began switching his compliments to insults and then told Megan they can no longer be friends because he “heard” she was not nice to her friends.   The cyber exchange devastated...