The Panoptic Machine and Its Effects: Cyberbullying

Out of all the adolescents in the United States, nearly half of them have experienced cyber-bullying. With the recent hype over the circumstances of Amanda Todd's suicide, nearly every parent has thought about the causes and consequences of such abominable behavior.

Schools are turning to surveillance agencies online to better monitor the well-fare of students but what if this is not the only solution? What we should be monitoring is the societal surveillance that we place our children under, the panoptic machinations such as taboos, ideals, and norms that we condition them to accept.

Foucault metaphorically used the panopticon in order to describe an all-seeing disciplinary establishment where the use of bars and irons would no longer be needed. It is the judgment of society and of peers that becomes the greatest deterrent of abnormal or criminal behavior. Power in the panopticon is not repressive, but rather productive in its effects. It disciplines us, trains us, molds us and fabricates us into this belief of becoming a better person.

Amanda Todd was a victim, first of a nameless criminal. This criminal used the anonymity and dissemination abilities of the Internet in order to defame and humiliate Todd. Normally society can target criminals such as these and punish them, and the fear of ostracism prevents normal individuals from such acts of harm. The Internet and social media, however, allows anyone to commit these crimes without being identified.

Furthermore, the chances of society targeting such criminals remain low because of the fact that we perceive internet crimes as meaningless and victimless. Catching illegal downloaders or movie pirates is not high on our priorities because we never see anyone getting hurt.

Groups such as Anonymous use this to commit crimes against the government and corporate institutions without consequence. Cyberbullies use temporary e-mails, pseudonyms, online chat programs and texting services to prevent association with their real identity. At the most, cyberbullies get blasted on internet forums and YouTube comments.

Amanda Todd became a victim because she wanted to be accepted. She sought the opinions of others online who told her that she was indeed special, amazing and beautiful. She accepted these as the ideals of womanhood and sought to please her admirers. Women are conditioned to want beauty, youth, and admiration.

Amanda Todd was a victim again, as a result of her peers. Todd did not hold up the ideals of American femininity when she exposed herself to a stranger. She was not modest or pure and the wrath of the machine--that is her peers could not have been crueler.

She was ostracized, beaten, and told to kill herself. Her peers did not try to hide their identities from Amanda, these were students from her school who posted on her Facebook wall and texted her. The bullies, in this case, her peers honestly felt righteous in telling her to kill herself.

The victims of cyberbullying do not generally fall into any one race, gender or sexual orientation; however, most victims have one thing in common. They are different; they either refuse to follow or cannot follow the ideals placed on them by society. Disabled children, homosexuals and bisexuals, overweight children often get the brunt of bullying school mates because they are simply different. Because society wants 'docile bodies' that are pliant to its demands.

Internet surveillance should be implemented and schools should monitor Internet behavior to help prevent situations like this from happening. We also need to change our ideas about Internet crimes--that each crime has a victim even though we can't see them.

Internet surveillance cannot be the only measure that parents take to prevent cyberbullying. Parents should be changing the ideals and norms that children accept. The cyberbullying that Amanda Todd experienced would not have happened if her peers did not think that it was justified. They felt that they had to punish her because society has conditioned them to punish non-conformity, especially when it threatens the ideals and morals that society relies on.

The panopticon can be changed. We can change this prison of thought if we influence our children to accept differences as normal. We need to teach them to tolerate variation and mistakes. We must show our young girls how to value qualities other than beauty and purity and our young boy's qualities other than strength and masculinity. We need to teach our children to accept others, not ostracize them.

Works Cited

"Amanda Todd's Story: Struggling, Bullying, Suicide, Self Harm." YouTube. YouTube, 11 Oct. 2012. Web. 8 Dec. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej7afkypUsc>.

Foucault, Michel. "Discipline and Punish, Panopticism." Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977. 195-228. Print.