Blog internet safety

An Open Letter to Teens Who Use Ask.fm; Read, Post, & Share

Posted on: January 17, 2014 at 6:10 pm
By: admin

I spend my days teaching Internet Safety to schools, parents, and students just like you. I never have to explain to students what Ask.fm is, because you already know and chances are you have a profile. (If you don’t know what Ask.fm is – read this article for the low-down)

You already know that Ask.fm is not a safe place to share information. I don’t know why some teachers and even parents treat teens and tweens like they’re stupid – clearly you’re not.

You already know that:

Ask.fm has been linked to suicides all over the world
Because Ask.fm is an anonymous site, lots of trolls will hide behind that anonymity and engage in nasty behavior
Many of your friends (or you) have already been bullied. Most of the so-called bullying isn’t a big deal because you and your friends know who the person is and you just ignore it. But sometimes it gets ugly, and sometimes it’s hard to get away from. And sometimes it really hurts, and most of the time you act like it doesn’t

Dealing with Pressure

Parents constantly ask me – “if this is all true, then why do the kids keep going back onto the site, and sites like this?”. Here’s what I tell them – and if I’m wrong I want you to tell me (tweet me here). I tell parents that you like to be connected to your friends, and even when it’s overwhelming and gets annoying (or certain people get annoying), you’d rather put up with the annoying and remain connected, it’s one of your only outlets even at the best or worst of times.

Your generation has an immense amount of pressure coming from all sides. Many parents expect you to always put forward an immense amount of effort on everything. Sometimes it feels like you can’t get anything right. Then there’s the social pressure at school added to the academic pressure, added to the pressure to be a sports-kid even if you don’t want to be a sports-kid; add in thinking about college or NOT thinking about college and sometimes it feels like you want to pop.

I get it. Seriously, I get it. (PS Hang in there, it gets better. And believe it or not, your parents are there to help.)

Is Ask.fm Evil?

Then parents ask me – “why are these companies allowed to exist if they’re harmful to our kids?”. Now that’s a better question. So here’s the thing – Ask.fm did not create their platform to cause harm. I don’t believe for a second that they are malicious people, or that they’re happy when young people commit suicide or get involved in sextortion, or worse. HOWEVER, their business is NOT to care about you. Did you hear that? Their business is to make money, that’s all.

And when you are a company hoping to make millions, or ten of millions of dollars off of young people, sometimes you assume that your audience is stupid. Make no mistake, most of the companies which market to young people think that you are a bunch of morons. Don’t forget this point.

Sneaker companies think that YOU really believe that just buying those new kicks are going to make you faster/better/stronger.
Ladies: clothing companies think that YOU really believe that those “women’s” pants (made for a 5 year old) are going to look the same on you as they do on the photoshopped model in the ad.
Guys: deodorant companies think that you REALLY believe that if you use their stinky products that hot chicks will maul you in an elevator.
And Ask.fm wants you to believe that communicating online anonymously is a smart and valuable use of your time.

You’re not stupid. You see other kids all over the world committing suicide or at the very minimum getting their feelings hurt on this totally unnecessary platform. And you know that there are eleventy-gajillion other ways to communicate with each other. You certainly don’t need Ask.fm to connect to your friends – you already do that in a bunch of different way. So why do it?

What to do now

Here’s what I’m asking you to do:

Deactivate your Ask.fm account
Log into your account, go to [Settings] in the top right hand corner of the page, go to the profile page and chose the [Disable Account] option.
Send a tweet or Instagram post to the companies who advertise on Ask.fm just to make sure that THEY know that you aren’t stupid (see list below)
Be sure to use the hashtag #dontaskfm
Spread the word to your entire social network
Pat yourself on the back, you’ve proven that you won’t grow up to be a total jerk

Oh, and just one last thing – stop taking pictures of your junk. It’s going to land you in jail. But that’s another topic.

Now get to work!!

Let’s tell these advertisers what we think
Click each and every image below – it will retweet the message to let these companies know that they need to stop advertising on Ask.fm