Cyber Bullying: Felicia Garcia’s Tragic Farewell Via Twitter

According to Rolling Out:

“Felicia Garcia of Staten Island, New York is the second teenager in as many weeks to commit suicide after being bullied.

Reports are that she was the victim of slut-shaming. Slut-shaming, as it is called, is the act of teasing a young woman on social networks and in real life about her rumored sexual history.

Cyberbullying has been so prominent among teenagers nowadays and there is an intense need to understand what goes in the child’s head and why many times, it results in deaths, mainly suicides. It is not the loss of any of these people instead to the family that lovingly brought the child up. There are various forms of cyberbullying and they all in one way or the other cause dangerous after effects to the child. Normally it happens to the most unpopular child or children who have done something that has been deemed ridiculous by the audience.

Normally it starts with excluding the person out of their social group and not give them any form of importance. It is a cruel activity and the child feels alone and left out. Another kind is constant harassment where abusive and disrespectful messages are sent to the child and the child feels abused and hurt. The self-confidence of the child is under attack and it is difficult to rebuild once destroyed. The child is then embarrassed publicly, ridiculed and made a laughing stock in front of their entire community, in kids it is in school while for college goers in their college.

Cyberstalking is another main way where a person is followed relentlessly all around the internet following them everywhere making them conscious about their own mind and activities. Impersonation is another means where another person opens your account and send abusive messages to others and make inappropriate posts claiming to be the actual account holder. These activities will corner and haunt a child and if things go out of hand end their lives. The home page gives more information on this.

Felicia Garcia, who authorities reported had sex with four football players at a party last Saturday night, had become the target of such ridicule and the bullies insulted her up until the moment she ended her own life.

Judging from her final Tweet, ‘I’m done,’ the teenager did not have an army strong enough to stop the bullying and/or to bring the culprits to justice.