The movie Unfriended was recently released in theaters. The main storyline is that there was a girl whom was cyber bullied to the point where she decided to kill herself. This teen returns from the dead to punish her bullies via Skype for tormenting her. She forces each of them to kill themselves in one way or another. It’s a pretty basic, twisted plot line, but it has a few important messages to share.
Cyber bullying is still bullying, and it can do a lot of harm. This is portrayed in the movie in that Laura is so hurt and embarrassed from being cyber bullied that she kills herself. It is so important for you to think before posting. If what you are going to post will hurt another person’s feelings or embarrass them, it’d probably be best that you just delete it.
It also brings into play the fact that it would come back to haunt you if you bullied someone to the point of suicide. Not literally, like it was in this movie, but you would have to live with their blood on your hands for the rest of your life. Even the cruelest of cyber bullies probably would not be able to live with that guilt. Even if you are angry with a person, remember that they are still just a person too, and we all make mistakes. It’s not worth torturing them, because you never know how they will respond to your actions until it is too late.
Lastly, it brings up the issue of confidentiality of material posted online. Anything you post can be found by someone else who knows what they are doing, even if you delete it. Once it’s out there, it stays out there. Be smart and don’t post anything anywhere online that will show you in a negative light. It can easily be dug up and used against you. This was shown in the case with Laura posting an embarrassing video Blaire recorded of her onto Blaire’s Facebook. Blaire got a lot of backlash from her peers, and could likely lose out on a lot of great opportunities in the future due to bad content like that being associated with her name.