“No one will see it. It goes away after a while.” But, where does it go? Chances are, what you say are seen by someone, and more often than not, they hurt someone.

Words hurt more than people think.

Websites aren’t doing anything to stop people from injuring others.

They don’t see what poison people put on websites.

Many sites even encourage it.

If they don’t encourage it, they do create tools for people attack others. All of the sites people use daily are huge databases for abusive content. Some people chip away at people until they believe that they are nothing. Using social media just gives these people another outlet for being ruthless and awful.


It can be stopped.


It can be caught.


It can end.


If sites would hire people to survey the content, or allow the people to mandate what happens on their account, the words may hurt less.


Ask.fm is a site that allows users to anonymously question, or comment on one’s profile. It has been linked to more suicides of minors than any other site in existence. The site acknowledges the suicides with a wave of a hand. The site refuses to monitor the content, believing, that the users are simply asking complementary questions of each other. However, that is not the case, many users write harmful sentences about another user. The site also has no limit, you could publish dozens of phrases with no sign of stopping. The worst part: The user can’t report it. The users used to be able to report abusive behavior on the site, ut nothing would happen, now, you can’t even report it


About 30% of all teens in the United States are victims of bullying. The teen population makes up almost 48% of the United States population, and many of them are victims of bullying. In this generation, most of american teens have computers available to them. And, most are active on social media, making anyone able to be a victim.

Or a bully.

Many of teen suicides are linked to social media, and studies have shown that more teens in this generation are likely to self harm, or commit suicide than any other generation before, all because of an exposure to a maliciou source called - Anonymous posting.


Many people have said things comprising of phrases such as: “why can’t they just close the computer, delete the accounts?” The issue is, as much as teens and victims of cyber bullying would like to escape the wretched voices calling them out, but they simply can’t. Psychologically, if something is upsetting to a human, they’ll want it to end, but they’ll want to visibly witness it ending as well. Also, by the time they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, they’re addicted to the site, and they feel like they can’t get off. Also, the pressure of having accounts on social media sites is greater than presumed. In some cases, you’re bullied for not having the account, bullied when you get it, and bullied when you get off. So, based on the pressure, you’re stuck in anyways, meaning that deleting the account would be difficult, and they can’t get off the site.




In October 2012, Erin Gallagher, a 13 year old girl, hanged herself after a long battle with bullies on ask.fm. Her story was not unlike other teens. Jessica Laney, age sixteen, killed herself not long after Erin, and left a note demanding the shutdown of ask.fm. A petition was released and it reached almost 30,000 signatures, yet, nothing was down. After Erin and Jessica, Shannon Gallagher, Erin’s sister committed suicide following abusive comments regarding her sister on ask.fm. All of the suicides have more than one common thread. One would be that each victim requested that ask.fm be shut down. However, nothing has been done, even though the site has acknowledged the deaths as purely the victims fault, thus proving the sites apathetic glances to pleas of shutdown.



So why aren't we monitoring the content? These sites are obviously causing trouble, and why wouldn't we stop them? We have the resources, we have the evidence against them. If 12 year olds are committing suicide, and, 10 year olds are cutting themselves just based on a website. Why wouldn't we stop that? Less abusive content, less depression, anxiety and negative disorders caused by emotional trauma. By finding a petition online, we can stop bullying sites such as ask.fm.
Why wouldn't we?