![]() "You don't have some of those built-in inhibitions," Szatmari adds. There is no doubt that anonymity makes it easier for people to say and do things they otherwise wouldn't. Peter Szatmari, chief of the child and youth mental-health collaborative between Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto.īut, he says, bullying is "always toxic," whatever form it takes. No one has published studies on whether or not anonymous bullying is more psychologically damaging than knowing who your attacker is, says Dr. While it seems intuitive that anonymity would undermine trust in relationships with peers in a particularly insidious way, research hasn't caught up with the technology. "If it was any friends of mine that voted, then I'd be able to take them out of my life," she says. The Pew survey of parents of 13-to-17-year-olds found that, despite the urging from experts, only 61 per cent of parents have ever checked which websites their teen visited only 60 per cent have ever checked their teen's social-media profile 39 per cent have ever used parental controls for blocking, filtering or monitoring their teen's online activities and only 41 per cent of mothers and 30 per cent of fathers said they frequently talk with their teen about what is appropriate and inappropriate online behaviour.īut it's the anonymity of ask.fm that makes it so easy for children to be cruel to one another, often with a level of ugliness that is horrifying to adults – but somehow commonplace to kids in a digital age, so many of whom can't bear to be left out of any conversation, even if it does become abusive.Ĭantwell still doesn't know who posted the poll or who cast votes, a fact that continues to bother her. And though child psychologists have been warning about the toxic effects of online bullying and advising parents to act the moment they learn a child is being attacked online, new data from the Pew Research Center shows many parents have no idea what's happening in their children's online lives. It's hardly a problem unique to that province schools across the country have talked about ask.fm and cyberbullying with their students. Now, less than two months later, the Newfoundland and Labrador English School District is looking into complaints of five other such online polls, The Canadian Press reported recently. ![]() "To the person that made the 'ugliest girls in grade 12 at hth' ask.FM straw poll," the teenager from Torbay, Nfld., began, "I'm sorry that your life is so miserable that you have to bring others down." ![]() The response Cantwell subsequently wrote on her Facebook page went viral. "Who are the ugliest girls in Grade 12 at ?" someone had posted anonymously on ask.fm, a website popular among tweens and teens that allows users to ask each other questions anonymously. Lynelle Cantwell was sitting in math class when she learned about the poll. ![]()
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