Kids Safety
Sean is one of those teenagers who just loves social media and he has lots of fun joking around with his friends in cyberspace. But what if someone else starts having fun at your expense? What if you get hurt by someone you can’t even identify? Read on to find out how Sean figured out who was trolling him on Ask.fm.
My story
I love using social media and when I heard about Ask.fm I had to set up an account. People post questions to me and I respond to them. I like having fun and I thought the guys and I could joke around sending each other funny messages.
In the beginning it was like that, but after a while I started getting really hurtful and mean messages from an anonymous person. The messages were constant. They were saying things like, “You’re rubbish at football” and “You’ll never get a girlfriend spot face”. The bully kept sending these messages for three weeks but the longer I ignored the cyberbully the meaner the messages got. I then decided to reply saying, “Stop sending me these messages” and “GO AWAY” but the cyberbully kept going calling me a “girl” and a “coward”.
I didn’t want to worry my parents because my Dad had lost his job recently and had a lot on his mind. It finally got to a stage where I couldn’t handle it anymore though so I decided to tell my coach at my hockey club because I get on really well with him and showed him the messages. He told me to screenshot the messages and save everything and then delete my account. Once my account was deleted I got a message from a friend asking why I had deleted it. It turned out he was the cyberbully but he thought it was funny and when I asked him why he sent the abusive messages he said he “was joking”. He thought I knew who was doing it and didn’t realize the impact it had on me.
After talking about it, we are still really good friends and he promised nothing like that would ever happen again. I’m so happy that what he said he didn’t mean.
