Earlier today I was home for lunch and after my meal i was flicking through my Facebook news feed. A friend had posted a R.I.P message with a video link titled Amanda Todd. I clicked on it and began watching the video.
The first thing that caught my eye is when she mentioned that she was in 7th grade, had access to a video cam, chatted online with strangers and flashed them! Hello! Where were the parents? Why was she allowed access to a webcam and the Internet at a young age of twelve/thirteen?
I know there are predators out there and it is my job as a parent to keep my daughter safe. Where were the adults in her life? Why do people have kids if they cannot take responsibility for them, protect and nurture them? Isn’t it easier to just get a dog?
This girl’s life was snatched away from her because of the lack of adult guidance and supervision. The fact that someone took advantage of her on the internet, the fact that she was bullied because of it, the fact that she made poor decisions in her life were all a by-product of this lack of supervision.
So before painting this story to be only about internet predators or bullies, let’s dig deeper and find out why the parents or adults don’t figure anywhere in this story. Of course predators should be brought to justice and sure bullying shouldn’t happen, but people, these things happen when parents are not actively involved in the lives of their children.
For the sake of the other Amanda’s out there, we need to understand what went wrong before opportunistic predators and bullies got involved. I request parents to be more vigilant with their children’s use of the Internet. Adults have been killed by Internet predators, Amanda was only twelve.