Final Exam
Cyberbullying: A Victim Tells His Story //by Alex Clearwater
Final Exam is dedicated to teens whom have gone through a real experience related to issues facing teens today. Through these true stories we hope to inspire awareness to parents and children, but also to use as a communication opener.
When kids started calling Jacob of Chandler “stupid,” “fat” and“ugly,” he didn’t respond to them. “I never answered the bullying. I just walked by and kept my head held high because I figured that the less reaction they got out of me,the more they would leave me alone,” he says.To those around him, Jacob appeared unaffected by the name-calling, but inside, he was deeply bruised.“I reacted to the name calling in a negative way:
by cutting myself,” says Jacob, who was in seventh grade at the time. Jacob’s parents sent him to counseling and he gradually began to discover his true self worth and healthier ways to channel his anger. “Therapy helped me cope by allowing me to talk to someone who was unbiased and who I knew I could trust besides my parents,” he says.When Jacob started high school, he decided to set up an anti-bullying website to help other teenagers. He also made a YouTube video reporting the death of a 13-year-old student from England who hanged himself after being cyberbullied. In this video, Jacob chastised the cyberbullies who were posting their own videos mocking the teenager’s suicide. “Cyberbullying isn’t a joke,” Jacob says in his video. “It’s like going to your next-door neighbor and telling him it’s okay to shoot himself and he actually does it. You’re an accomplice to murder for not stopping it. You’re online, masking your identity and…putting them down for who they are.”After posting the YouTube video, Jacob’s website grew in popularity and began attracting thousands of visitors daily and hundreds of e-mail. It was also publicized in an English newspaper. “[My full name] was all over YouTube and the website for all to see, which was a major mistake on my part. I was part of MySpace and Facebook at the time and took full advantage of their privacy guards, but I now know those privacy guards mean nothing,” says Jacob. “My dad warned me there would be backlash.” Jacob’s video enraged cyberbullies from around the world, including England, Asia and Australia. For the next six months, the cyberbullies launched a concerted attack against him. Jacob received thousands of crank calls, obscene e-mails and death threats. As a result, he shut down his website and social networking accounts, changed his phone number and rarely left his house. Although he filed a police report, they were unable to locate the cyberbullies. “It brought our family closer together because it was affecting all of our lives, not just mine,” says Jacob. “It was a damaging point in my life and it knocked me down emotionally.”Today, the 18-year-old’s life is back to normal and he has returned to helping teens deal with bullying. He spends a lot less time online and more time talking with kids face-to-face who are looking for advice. Although he’s back on the web, he maintains a much lower profile. “The advice that I would give other kids isto always listen to your parents regardless of[whether] you feel their advice or warnings are stupid, or if you don’t feel like it could happen to you—because I never thought anything like this would happen to me.”
Names have been changed to protect the
identity of those involved.
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