Excerpt from CNET News;
“Formspring.me, is a social media tool that allows users to anonymously ask questions for others to publicly answer. Users get a unique URL that points their friends (or foes) to a simple form that reads, "Ask me anything." But, of course, the simplest things can sometimes be the most problematic…But, worse, they can also fill a user's in-box with hate mail, harassment, or other inappropriate statements.” (news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-20001513-2.html)
17 year old Alexis Pilkington was a normal girl. She had many friends, got good grades, and was an important player on her high school's soccer team in West Islip, NY. None of that mattered on March 21, 2010 when Alexis took her own life after receiving countless hurtful, degrading comments and horrifying threats on social networking site Formspring.
The bullying didn't even stop after Alexis was pronounced dead. A group was created on Facebook for friends and family of Alexis to talk with each other, share stories, and comfort each other to cope with the tragedy. Cyber-bullies took this as an opportunity to write painful messages to make the friends and family of Alexis suffer more.
If police determine cyberbullying was a cause of Alexis' death, criminal charges could be made to the people making the comments and threats. Since the suicide, 4,600 teenagers have pledged to boycott the cyberbullying platform that Formspring truly is. Formspring claims to have had 50 million unique visitors last month.
Awareness is key…so is parental supervision. With new technology and new sites, such as Formspring, keeping up is increasingly more difficult for parents. We advocated awareness. It’s also important to implement parental management tools. What’s starting to look more like an epidemic, can only be addressed by these two measures.
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