Why our kids, like Amanda Todd, are trapped in The Matrix
Amanda Todd, the 15-year-old B.C. teen who committed suicide last week, resided in a world much like the one depicted in the popular 1999 film, The Matrix. The majority of her social life was spent plugged into a digital community of millions, while physically, she sat completely alone.
Amanda Todd committed suicide after being cyber-bullied on Facebook.
The following is a guest column written by Michael Hiscock.
In The Matrix, humanity is unaware that they have been trapped in a digital reality. Yet endless fields of humans are grown in pods, connected literally, from the head, to a giant super computer. Machines had successfully turned humans into living batteries.
With Facebook’s first earnings report pegging the number of active users at 955 million, a fair chunk of the planet is now connected to similar digital identities within a computerized world.
The solitary practice of being online, counter intuitively, is now the way to be social. With almost a billion people now engaging in Facebook, the real world is beginning to mirror the human fields depicted in the film.
These digital worlds of interaction are where Todd encountered many Agent Smiths — a kind of corrupt, digital police force engineered by the machines in The Matrix. They can digitally take form anywhere, instantly. For Todd, they came in the form of bullies.
Why didn’t she simply delete her social media accounts and cut off their power?
According to Kathy St. Denis, a counsellor with Kids Help Phone, her refusal to ditch Facebook likely stems from fear.
“They’re fearful of deleting people. It might lead to physical retaliation,” she said.
Teenage status and social media are directly correlated, she says. Having a 0-friend profile at a new school makes fitting in difficult. At the same time, leaving bullies on a friends list to boost its number only allows the torment to continue.
Even though Todd moved and changed cities, it proved futile because she remained connected to the Facebook matrix. Her bully-agents could continually check in to see what she was up to, as long as she stayed connected.
Cyber attacks on social media profiles and avatars cut so deep because they are beginning to dominate a teen’s sense of self.
Julian Soloninka, 22, is a student at Western University and an avid gamer. Having spent 280 hours living as an alternate identity in a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) world last summer, he knows plenty about its appeal.
“My inability to control real-world interactions was substituted by total control in the digital world,” Soloninka said. “To a certain extent, we live through these characters.”
MMORPGs allow people to create and customize the characters they become in the matrix. People can now give themselves whatever appearance and abilities they desire, even flight.
The same is true of the movie. Real-world rules can be bent because the matrix is not a real world, it simply appears as one.
Todd believed in the matrix because it was the world she had lived in since before grade 7, when her problems began.
She was bullied online, hounded online and even appealed for help online. It was as if she didn’t know she could exist outside of that realm.
Online gamers have even coined the phrase “RL,” standing for Real Life. People will say that their “RL” friends are over, for example. Our physical selves are now an afterthought.
Why do people remain in the matrix? Control, anonymity and fear; some of the same reasons teens are refusing to delete social media accounts in the face of bullying.
As the seemingly controlled world of Facebook spun wildly out of control for Todd, escape became almost impossible. The cyber assaults permeated the walls of her bedroom, the Agent Smiths invaded and she isolated herself more and more, until the computer was all she had left.
What is the solution to bullying that you can’t run away from?
St. Denis says it’s very simple: talk.
“Talk. Talk to someone you can trust. Do whatever is necessary to help,” she said.
Canadians are deeply divided on the solution, however. B.C. Premier Christy Clarke suggested criminalizing cyber bullying, NDP MP Dany Morin disagrees and first wants to study its prevalence and effects. In the meantime, the hacker group Anonymous continues to release the identities of people it says were Todd’s tormentors.
The premise on which The Matrix is based is this: though the matrix is not real, our minds make it real. If you die in the matrix, you die in real life.
In yet another sad parallel, everything the matrix did to Todd, she made real. She cut her wrists. She drank bleach. And, very tragically, committed suicide when her digital identity could take no more. Unlike the movie, there was no hero – no ‘Neo’ – to rescue her and free her from the matrix’s grasp.
Amanda Todd lost sight of the love and support she had in real life, succumbing instead to her virtual assailants’ vicious attacks.
For parents who worry that their son or daughter might become the next victim of cyber-bullying, the answer is not to avoid the matrix – that is next to impossible. Parents must instead arm their children with pride in their real-life and tangible accomplishments.
Only by helping them keep their feet firmly planted in this world, can we hope to help them thrive online.
Great article! Appreciate The Matrix parallel. Good read.
You wish our children to thrive online??? Encouraging people, especially our children to partake in online activities is not only dangling the carrot in front of their nose, it is empowering the social networks to continue allowing this stuff to happen! You are saying it is nearly impossible to quit the matrix. What this tells me is you are actually saying, “it is too hard”. Hell, yes, it is hard, but would you put a bottle of vodka in a recovering alcoholics hand and then say, don’t drink it? You can attempt to ground your children all you want, but when you allow them to participate in online activities, you are giving them a mixed message. You are telling them you would rather they not BUT go ahead anyway as long as you remember this and don’t do this, etc. Parents are way too worried about their children fitting in or missing out that they compromise their own values to meet the “wants”, and not the true needs of their children. It is way easier to eliminate online activities altogether, than to try and clean up the mess afterward. I grieve for Amanda Todd and her family, and pray for those who still think that their children can thrive in the matrix.
Hey Barb, I hear what you’re saying, and it seems reasonable. But it doesn’t take into account the reality of life for most teens. Telling them not to participate on social networking sites is akin to saying “don’t play in the playground” when all of their friends are doing it. Is there risk involved in playing on the monkey bars? Yes. You could get seriously hurt. But unless you subscribe to the idea that we should be trying to shield our kids from every possible threat (and thus keep them from enjoying anything), it makes more sense to arm them with the tools they need to participate with greatest chance of having fun. Besides, kids have a way of doing things they want to do – even when it has been forbidden by parents. Easier to acknowledge this than to pretend otherwise.
It seems to me that the social media – ahem, that’s you Facebook – needs to reign in the underage profiles, seeing as Ms. Todd was on it since Grade 7 (which the average age in Grade 7 is 12, yet FB says nobody under the age of 13 can sign up). Facebook was made for college-age students, not children!
It also seems that the most prolific posters in a daily newsfeed are girls/women. And most of what they post is to get a reaction of some sort, negative or positive. It’s almost like people judge their whole being on how many “likes” they get on a post. It’s truly sickening from a psychological viewpoint.
We (parents, and society in general) clearly are not setting these kids up to be strong, confident individuals, instead we are teaching them that one’s self-worth comes from the opinions of others. A recipe for disaster, if there ever was one.
Smartest comment I have read this evening.
yeah
Well said, both Michael and Barb.
I think all the public outcry should include more criticism of people’s obsession with Facebook “friend-collecting” and “likes” – many media stories about Amanda insist on mentioning how her Facebook “memorial page” has received over a million “likes”, pretending that social media neuroses AREN’T THE PROBLEM !!!!
It seems as though some of these addicted users should go to rehab just like alcoholics & hard drug users do. I have relatives & friends who are in Facebook heavily for up to 10 hours a day & they give me ( a 78 year old man), crap for not being a heavy user, too.
On this one point I disagree there was a possible Neo for Amanda, her mother and father who for whatever reason was out of touch with Amanda’s scale of predicament. Amanda had changed schools and residence surely her mother was aware of the previous situation. But not the ongoing torture, how is that possible?
I feel deeply for Amanda and her family too. But I have learned well from my parents who are involved in the everyday RL of our family. The technology in our house is strictly controlled. I’m in second year university so my privileges are increased. Even still, our bedrooms remain devoid of technology other than an alarm clock, parents included. My parents have taught us to control our technology not allowing technology to control our lives. All computer time is done in the family room where we all have full access to the wired world, but my parents are only a few yards away most of the time.
We live RL by having friends over, going outside and we as a family do many things together. Parents have to be proactive, corrective and extreme examples of all that we can be as positive contributors to society and humankind. Instead of letting, us watch TV, or play video games or sit on Facebook all day my parents engaged us and educated me about the world around us. They made RL fascinating we responded by wanting more, more was given and our wisdom increased exponentially. Friends started hanging around our house more than their own and those who did became and still are my best RL friends. I don’t want 40,000 friends, just the fantastic five that I do have and my family.
From what I have seen and heard in others homes is heart rending. So am I bragging about my upbringing, no. But I bring this up to show that there is parental responsibility that needs to be addressed. Even though I’m only seventeen (almost eighteen), I know that I want to mimic my parent’s skills with my future family, who will know their grandparents in RL.
Big Al, I’d rather play cards with you than chat electronically, lol. Hold your ground and your grandchildren we all need that physical touch that tells us we are loved.
When adults are bullied – it’s called harassment. My neighbour harassed, threatened and physically assaulted me – and got away with it because he lied to Police and his friend across the street also made false statements to Police as a witness. They spoke together before the Police arrived – and the Police just blindly believed everything they said. I was not even given a chance to properly tell Police my account of what happened (Tunnel Vision). My hostile neighbour then took advantage of this situation and totally slandered me and defamed my reputation. He became very popular in the neighbourhood (he has a narcissistic personality) – and everyone just heard his twisted story. He often stood right in front of his house or across the street from my house and spoke very loudly to all kinds of different neighbours – and pretended to be the “victim”.
I’m afraid of my neighbour – because he’s so hostile towards me and harmed me in many ways (I had Post Traumatic Stress after the incident when my neighbour physically assaulted me). I am very, very careful to avoid him. But I can’t go to Police for help because he was very cunning in the way he so eloquently lied and they have tunnelvision. I have social anxiety and I definitely don’t have a facebook or twitter account. I can’t commit suicide like Amanda Todd did because I care about my family and don’t want to shock them.
Since I had to deal with this on my own – I had to help myself. Happiness is a Choice. I made every effort to develop positive ways to cope. There are many books out there that are very, very helpful. Books on how to cope with Post Traumatic Stress, how to reduce anxiety, etc. I also found it helpful to read “Sorrow Mountain” by Ani Pachen – about how the people from Tibet coped with the very violent Chinese invasion of their land in the 1950s (another form of bullying – among nations). What I found especially helpful is “MINDFULNESS MEDITATION”.
In recent decades, psychologists and neuroscientists in the United States have been very interested in researching meditation. Meditation has spread in many areas as an effective way of reducing stress, stress-related disorders and anxiety, as well as helping people cope with difficult life circumstances. According to the davidlynchfoundation.org – Meditation as part of the school curriculum gives youth more control over their lives and students have responded well as they notice many benefits.
Simply focusing the mind on something neutral like one’s own breathing (inhaling/exhaling), imagery (ie. a pet) or the word “relax” or “calm down” – really does settle down the nervous system and helps many calm down and reduce stress. Meditation creates a more coherent pattern of thinking and behaviour. Students become more creative, have greater self-esteem, reduced anxiety and depression, increased I.Q. and improved memory and academic performance. They are able to concentrate better. They are more emotionally stable, and are better able to cope with stress and frustration. They are also more inclined to make wise decisions. The students in these research studies on meditation (in the U.S.) have also improved socially as they became more alert, calm, and happier.
I’m writing this to hopefully help and inspire other victims of bullying and harassment – because there are some very effective ways to cope with anxiety and depression. It’s a daily ongoing struggle. At least I can avoid my neighbour – no doubt it’s awful for young students to have to face hostile peers at school – daily. It’s so good that in recent years society has recognized the impact bullying has on young people – and that there’s a growing culture that inspires students to have more respect for one another.
@Some Adults are Bullied Too
A word of advice …. document everything from this time forward. Dates, times and what was said or done – literally, write it down. The Police know that if someone takes the time to do this that you may actually be the victim – this simple act of documentation will turn the table on your bully. Video tape evidence is also helpful – it doesn’t need to be admissable in court to prove to the Police that YOU are the victim.
As for Facebook, many of my friends (adults BTW) see FB as an addiction that even they can’t give up. So if grown adults can’t …..
When will people learn?
The Internet has been Erin’s long enough to know better and bullying has been happening since people existed.
To put it bluntly…. The Internet can kill!
Do you let your child have a gun or drive a car at 12?
Then they should not have cell phones, twitter accounts, Facebook accounts etc until their old enough to know how to use them properly.
My daughter is only 2 1/2 right now but she will not be online when she’s older unless its under my own account so I can monitor everything.
My sympathies go out to any parent or child who is a victim of cyber bullying but we as parents have to adjust our parenting skills to keep up with the times. Not the government or the schools…. US the parents.
When will people learn?
The Internet has been around long enough to know better and bullying has been happening since people existed.
To put it bluntly…. The Internet can kill!
Do you let your child have a gun or drive a car at 12?
Then they should not have cell phones, twitter accounts, Facebook accounts etc until their old enough to know how to use them properly.
My daughter is only 2 1/2 right now but she will not be online when she’s older unless its under my own account so I can monitor everything.
My sympathies go out to any parent or child who is a victim of cyber bullying but we as parents have to adjust our parenting skills to keep up with the times. Not the government or the schools…. US the parents.
Interesting comment