cy·ber·bul·ly·ing
?s?b?r?bo?ol?iNG/
noun
the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature.


What’s worse than cyberbullying? Some may say nothing, some may say physical bullying, and a small percentage will say Ask.fm. Ask.fm is one of the worst things that could have happened to our society. It is an application thats purpose was for teenagers to ask each other anonymous questions, but as you can probably infer people don’t use it for that. Teens use it to send hurtful messages to each other because there is no way to find out who it is. This is a huge problem because it is causing everything bullying is, but to the max. Anonymous hate is terrible because since there is no name attached to the message, it causes us to read it in our own voices which makes us believe what they say.

Twelve. Twelve teenagers have decided to take their own life because of this app. Twelve innocent teenagers let the anonymous comments get to them. I will never understand how someone can sit behind a screen and type ‘kill yourself’, click send, and feel satisfied with themselves. If you were to look at someones questions, there is a 93% chance that there will be a hurtful comment included. My question box consists of “you are a slut,” “all of your friends are pretty then there is you,” and lastly, “ur a b****”. I personally never answer these statements. If I do, people will just accuse me of sending myself these for attention. It happens to everyone, which stinks. One of my friends, who we can call Katie, has had a fair share of this. Katie recently began hanging out with a new group of friends and was accused of doing it for popularity. She has very low self esteem, due to the fact that her old friends treated her like crap. Everyday for about a week, she received three hurtful comments over Ask.fm. The worst part is, we don’t know who is responsible. It finally stopped, but it was enough to push her over the edge. She went to self harm as a solution, which no one should ever need to do. Katie is one of my best friends, and it hurts me to realize that someone could be so mean to such a sweet, fragile girl. Another one of my friends, who we can call Mary, has been through it also. Mary’s self of steam was also hurting, and it has been even before this app was created. She self harmed regularly, and no one had a clue. But about 4 months ago, we had a sleepover. I went in the bathroom, not knowing she was there, and saw them. I saw the cuts. I was the first person to see them, and I had no idea what to do. I hugged her, told her everything was going to be alright, and that we can through this. I asked her why, and all she did was hold her phone up to my face. The phone fell to my hands and I began to see what was being sent to her over Zsk.fm. The things on the screen didn’t make any sense to me. They said things like “you’re fat”, “ur so disgusting”, “why are you here”, and worst of all, “kill yourself.” Mary is the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen, and her body was perfect they way it was. I asked her if she believed what these people were saying, and she nodded her head. That’s what pushed me over the breaking point and made me realize that this app needs to be deleted.
Some people may say ‘if you hate the app, why won’t you just delete it?’. There’s something about it that makes it impossible to delete. The app is addictive, and that’s the worst part about it. The average user goes on this app twice a day, which is two times too many. No one monitors the content on Ask.fm. The ask.fm website states, "The ask.fm service allows for anonymous content which ask.fm does not monitor. You agree to use the ask.fm service at your own risk and that ask.fm shall have no liability to you for content that you may find objectionable, obscene or in poor taste." If this isn’t a huge red flag, I’m not really sure what is. There are no privacy settings or restrictions on the app, meaning your account is open to everyone and anyone. You can block someone’s main account, but there are many other ways that this person can still contact your account. They can go on the web version, make a new account, and many other ways.

There are many solutions for this problem, but I believe that signing a petition that has already been started is the most effective. Izzy Dix, 14, committed suicide because of the app. Her mother is the one who has started the petition because she believes no one should ever have to go through what her daughter did, and even what her family went through. It has 11,000 signatures as of February 2014, and more and more are being added by the day. The petition will get the app deleted from the app store and the website shut down. This is effective because the users won't delete it no matter how much they want to, and if it is deleted they will have no choice but to stop sending and receiving hate.
From the evidence that is shown, it is clear that this app is a problem that needs to be solved. Innocent teenagers choose to end their own life because an anonymous person finds it enjoyable to sit behind a computer or phone and send hurtful things. I have attached screenshots of some of my friends and I’s ‘questions’ below. That is just a small example of what kind of rude things people send and receive, and it just keeps getting worse. This is one of the biggest problems in society and we can easily solve it by signing a petition.