Facebook.
Twitter.
Ask.fm.
Social media is plastered all over every teenager’s phone. Aside from providing entertainment, these apps are not as harmless as they seem.
From being able to post a status anonymously or under a defined username, anyone can submit what he or she wants. When submitted, the status will be posted for everyone who follows this said account to see.
Sometimes the social media accounts can connect and users can share photos, or posts they made. For example, Instagram allows for photos to be shared to other social media accounts, and Ask.fm posts can be shared onto Twitter.
Ask.fm is an app where people are able to ask a user a random question. The user can then choose to answer the question or not. When people reply to the questions, they sometimes share them to Twitter so others see their answers.
By using the Ask.fm and Twitter apps together, people are able to create accounts called confession pages. Behind the scenes of these accounts are people who answer questions others ask them concerning others.
Recently, a student at Middletown High School created a Twitter and aAsk.fm confessions page called “@m_townconfess”. Students in the school would submit questions asking what this mysterious source thought about a certain person, or asking them to rank the top students in a class based by looks.
Although the page did not last long, for the time it was up, it was the talk of the school. It would come up in conversations and glow on the screens of many students’ phones.
MHS senior Jack Kiley said, “It relates to our personal lives and we know these people, we walk in the halls with these people, we see these people every day. It’s not like you’re talking about a celebrity everyone knows.”
For days students would read things about fellow classmates. Some were positive but also others negative. No one seemed to know who ran the account, but many wanted to know.
The site started to become like a drug. At any possible moment, students would check the page, showing their friends posts about themselves, spreading the word like an epidemic.
“Confession pages are so addicting because once people see their name on it they just want to see more, they want to know who wrote it and who’s responding to it,” MHS senior Molly Spillman said. “I think it’s all about them seeing their name and getting recognition for it.”
This led to bigger problems. Students would accuse others about being behind the page. Assumptions were mad, and people ended up hurting others.
“@m_townconfess” then caught on and pretended as if the person running it was someone else. This created more controversy.
MHS senior Celia Boudart said she thought it was people “hiding behind a computer screen” as if to cover their identities but still be able to speak their mind, even if they have no proof that what they are saying is true.
“They can taint other people’s names,” Boudart added. “How is it their right to say something like that without having that person’s permission?”
As new statuses were being posted, the hidden person started to post harsher thoughts. Some statuses went as far as saying embarrassing things about a particular person for the whole school to see.
These updates could be interpreted as bullying by the reader. People don’t want negative statements made about them on social media, especially if they could tarnish their reputation.
Speaking about a familiar account called “FCPSconfessions,” MHS Assistant Principal Brooke Hontz said the administration looked at the page and found that many of the statements “could be used to bully other people” and that the page was open for all Frederick County students.
Although there was gossip about others, all students didn’t necessarily find the page that hurtful. In the beginning when the page was “trying not to be hurtful,” students thought of it in a different way.
“I think it’s kind of dumb; it’s just an addicting thing that people can’t stop posting,” said MHS junior Sam Beltran.
Adding to that, MHS senior Alex Cartner said, “I don’t have a problem with it as long as people watch what they say and just don’t include people’s personal life outside of school.”
