CHICAGO - "You should kill yourself."
It's a message that Vernon Hills, Ill., police officer Jim Kochsaid he sees "all the time" on the one of the newest socialnetworking sites that allows users to post messages anonymously.
Others include "why r u so ugly? i cant find one attractive thingabout u," "GO THE HELL AWAY! NO ONE LIKES U" and "whats wrong withur teeth theyre nasty."
Barely a year old, Formspring.me is quickly turning into asensation, in part because of teenagers who are attracted by theoption of leaving their names off their comments.
Formspring boasts nearly 20 million users around the world,according to a company spokeswoman. The idea of the site is to havea conversation by answering questions stemming from the prompt "Askme anything." So far, more than 1.5 billion questions have beenanswered.
"It's like a bathroom wall," said Koch, the school resourceofficer at Vernon Hills High School. "You write whatever you want."
As a result, nearly every day he is calling students in to talk,is on the phone with parents or is in the hallways hanging up newsstories of teens who committed suicide after being on the receivingend of nasty online remarks.
As damaging as some of the remarks can be for teens, they can'tseem to pull themselves away, Koch said. "As horrible as it is, asmuch as we can tell them to stay off the site, they develop anobsession with knowing what people think," he said.
Formspring spokeswoman Sarahjane Sacchetti touts the site's manybenefits and says Formspring doesn't want to see the productmisused.
An advantage to having such a public site is that parents don'thave to dig through text messages or hack into Facebook accounts,she suggested.
"Something that may happen on Facebook can happen behind closeddoors," Sacchetti said. "Everything that happens on Formspring isopen."
People who want to post comments on Formspring need an account,which they can create by providing a user name, password and e-mailaddress.
The premise of the site is to ask questions - such as, "If youcould have been the author of any book, what would it have been?" -on people's pages to learn about them through their answers."Curiosity drives engaging, authentic conversations," according tothe Web site. By clicking a box, however, the user asking thequestion, or making a degrading remark, can become anonymous.
As for anonymity being a bad thing, Sacchetti fundamentallydisagrees.
"We think anonymity is very positive," she said. "We think mostpeople use it for good."
Many questions can be benign, such as "If you could invite oneperson to dinner, who would it be?"
A university in Vermont recently used Formspring as a way toallow prospective students to ask questions about the college theywouldn't necessarily want to ask during a college interview. And arabbi in New York makes use of the site to answer questions aboutfaith, Sacchetti said.
About 75 percent of questions aren't asked anonymously, she said,and users have the option to stop receiving anonymous comments,block the user or report the comment. The site has a section aboutsafety, including how to know when you're being harassed and what todo if you feel like you're being bullied.
Alyssa Burrows, 15, a sophomore from Vernon Hills, canceled herFormspring account last fall after a series of insulting comments.
"I didn't understand the concept of it. It just was pointless tome," she said. "I don't need people putting me down."
Her classmate, Krishna Mundada, 17, of Vernon Hills, said hewitnessed others being bullied, insulted and even stalked on thesite.
"It only brings out the coward in people, and it's only makingmatters worse for everyone," Mundada said.
Brian Mustanski, who only recently heard of Formspring, is anassistant professor in the department of psychiatry at theUniversity of Illinois at Chicago who studies how the Internetaffects young people.
Anonymity coupled with a tiny text box can make teens brazen, hesaid. He likens fascination with the site to a car accident on theside of the road.
"People can't stop looking at it," he said. "In some ways, whatis being said is very off-putting, but it's there."
More than 50 percent of Formspring's users in the United Statesare between the ages of 13 and 34, according to a Web site thattracks online traffic and demographics.
Austin Johnson, the dean at Barrington High School near Chicagoand the district's safety coordinator, said he's seen problems withthe site at the high school and middle school level.
"I think it's a convenience thing," he said. "I think thestudents feel they won't face any consequences for the words they'rewriting."
A popular type of post is one claiming that one person hooked upwith another. If the student hears about it at school, the shock anddistress is automatically visible, he said. "The rumors always hurtthe most," Johnson said.
Whether it's the site's novelty or anonymity, the following isstrong.
"You could probably walk into any school in the suburban area, ormaybe in the country, and say, 'Have you heard of Formspring?' andthey'll say 'Yes,' " Johnson said. "I don't think they're all usingit, but they know what it is."
Johnson first became aware of the site last year, and he's aheadof the curve. "I'm guessing parents may not know it's out there," hesaid.
In the fast-changing world of social networking, school districtsare still trying to catch up. Some don't have cyberbullyingpolicies, while others await legal direction from the courts as tohow much they can discipline students for posts that are oftenwritten in the privacy of students' homes, on personal computers.
The only way a comment appears on a user's account is if he orshe responds to it. But sometimes the need to defend oneself is moreimportant than keeping the accusation private.
"I can understand the incredible temptation for teenagers to wantto monitor what other people are saying about them," said ElizabethSaewyc, a professor at the University of British Columbia and anexpert in youth health and bullying. "From the developmentalstandpoint, it's that time of life where you're establishing youridentity."
In her research of the long-term effects of bullying, she hasfound a significant increased risk of suicide. "I certainly don'tthink that most teens want to be so cruel that they lead tosomeone's suicide," she said. "When you add anonymity, it adds anadditional challenge."
- Chicago Tribune
No comments:
Post a Comment