FormSpring.me Provokes Harassment Amongst Teens
I wrote a post last week giving props to the FormSpring.me website. I regret giving them the attention I did. Over the past week, I have been monitoring some of my close friends’ FormSpring.me profiles. I have also spoken with people who have profiles on FormSpring.me. What I’ve found is that FormSpring.me provokes cyber-bullying, a form of harassment and bullying over the internet.
For example, I have a close friend who created a FormSpring.me profile a couple of days ago. At first, she was receiving questions from friends who were joking around and sending her inside jokes anonymously. She got a kick out of that. But don’t be fooled, it went all downhill from there. She began receiving messages related to sex, and even received a threat related to her “social status”. While I can’t go into details for her own privacy sake, I think I made my point clear. Harassment and bullying happens on FormSpring.me. It’s not made up.
For those of you who have been members of Facebook for some time, you may have remembered the honesty box. Almost every teen and young adult had one. It’s an application that allows you to submit anonymous messages to another Facebook friend. The amount of threatening and harassing messages sent and received through the application was unbelievable. That’s the whole reason the honest box application has died down.
Are we really going to let a website like FormSpring.me take the place of the honesty box and continue to allow kids a place to anonymously harass and embarrass others? What’s going on can’t be continued. Websites like FormSpring.me shouldn’t exist.
Oh lighten up…
99% of the email I receive is trash. Should we get rid of email? 99% of the commercials I see are dishonest, let’s get rid of them too. 50% (at least) of kids are jerks when they’re of school age and engage in *actual* bullying.
The world is what it is and you have to have a thick skin and be willing to shrug off the small stuff and stand up to the big stuff. The internet and anonymous bullying, flaming and trolling exist precisely because of reactions like this. They get a kick out of ruffling people’s feathers. YOU allow it to affect you. Sticks and stones remember? DON’T FEED THE TROLLS.
So if FormSpring.me “shouldn’t exist” (wow) let’s get rid of forums, newsgroups, chat, email and oh yeah, BLOGS that allow non-professional writers to express often unfounded and occasionally extremist views like banning websites they have a problem with.
P.S. – Don’t forget books! Burn them too! And movies, magazines…blah blah
Agree completely. My daughter has been using formspring and began receiving hateful questions. “Why r u so annoying?” “You are fat and ugly”. I’m closing her formspring account today.
I agree with this so sooo much. It is disgusting that applications like this let people say whatever they want without reprecussions or having to take responsibility. When there is no face to a comment there is not reason to hold back. It is not fair. Since the beginning of time for every action there has been a person to take accountability for it. If we allow technology to change that we’re not doing our jobs of protecting people from each other and themselves to the permanent effects of bullying.
Your first article prompted me to look at Formspring. As the mother of THREE teenage boys, I was shocked at what I say. I know the website is an attention getter, but is it worth all the abuse? Young people should ask themselves that. We live in a world with no boundaries, no privacy. It’s scary and depressing, really.
I have seen some pretty awful things said on formspring. Many people make an account out of innocent curiosity and they end up getting hurt. Yes, “sticks and stones” but some people are just more sensitive to things like that. I don’t know if the site should be completely banned or if there should just be some action taken to handle what has been going on.
I don’t care what people say to me on my formspring… honestly. I can just delete that stuff. Don’t take t personally, people do it on everybody’s. But for me? For me its different. I don’t have control about what is posted on other people’s formsprings. At first I laughed. Then I just thought it was annoying. Now? Now its almost unbearable. But guess what? Growing up in a technological age gives me the skills I need to track this person down by simple process of elimination. Check who is loserish enough to actually do that; Look at the typing and see if it looks fake and if it doesn’t find any distinguishable characteristics; compared them to the losers; and then confront them.
“Sticks and stones” my ass. I have probably the thickest skin you could find, and the amount of shit I go through is pretty funny. I don’t get embarrassed, I do get harrassed. All part of the beauty of growing up. But OMG. Um… stop thinking like mind-raped adults, and think like teens who know about this stuf. K, ’nuff said. Bye.
My sister was terribly harassed on this website. The things people carelessly said to her scarred her and now my family and I are going through serious problems to patch up what they started. I think kids are signing up for this website not knowing what they are getting into until they start being verbally harassed. It is just an excuse for bullying and I think it’s sad that people need to use this forum to say things they would never have the set to say to someones face. Kids need to go find something else to do other than these stupid websites, go play outside.
My daughter deleted her formspring acct. But that doesn’t stop the damage. An anonymous post on a former friends page reads ” I think Molly is going to kill herself” and ” Molly and Hunter got what they deserved.”. Given the context that Hunter and Molly are twins and Hunter died from a rare virus almost two years ago it isn’t hard to see the psychological cruelty there. Please, what can be done to stop this. I submitted a complaint to formspring, but what I really want is a phone number to speak with the site managers and an assurance of accountability.