After the recent tragic news of Caroline Flack sadly taking her own life, I think as a society we need to take action against the kind of social media abuse she received over the upcoming court case. I will not go into details about the case. Firstly, it’s not my main point of this post, and secondly no one knows the facts and truth, even those who sent abusive and cruel messages to her.

The media has a tendency to bend the truth or to lie to sell a few newspapers or get so many views on a website. It’s disgusting.

Caroline Flack isn’t the only person to have committed suicide over social media abuse; statistics show that suicide rates from social media abuse have doubled since 2018. I can’t express enough how sad those figures are, knowing that people are taking there own lives over being bullied and targeted online. It’s heart-breaking .

I fear for my own children as they get older and start going online, signing up to the various social media platforms there will be. As a parent, I can only protect them and monitor their activity for so long then they will reach an age where I can no longer restrict their profiles as they become young adults. All I can do is warn them and advise them that at any point if they are being abused online or any other way, to speak to me.

There are two important things everyone should come away with from this post.

1. If you are being targeted and abused, please seek help. Talk to your parents or any other family member, a teacher or even the police. Do not suffer in silence and take the abuse, make yourself heard and stand up to these Trolls.

2. If you are targeting someone or know of anybody abusing people online, then make it stop. You have no idea the damage that is being caused to someone, even if you are just ‘messing around’ or ‘having a joke’. It maybe a laugh to you, but in no way at all is it funny. You wouldn’t be laughing if someone took their own life because you were just ‘messing around’. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

I know this post seems serious, but it’s a serious matter that will only get worse if we don’t do something about it now. We should be here for one another supporting and helping each other, not tormenting and bullying.

Please share this post, it’s a message that everyone should know and learn from.

 
I’ll end with the quote Caroline Flack used before she sadly took her own life.
“In a world where you can be anything, be kind.”