Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Vine, Twitter – take your pick. Any one of these social media sites can connect to you a world you didn’t know existed. And it’s a little scary, especially if you somehow find yourself using the now popular Ask.fm site.

This site allows teens to create their own public page for people to submit questions either anonymously or not. It seems fun, but it has hidden dangers to it.

Teens abuse the idea of leaving questions/comments to someone and being able to stay 100% anonymous about it. They hide behind their computer screens and leave hateful comments on many innocent kid’s pages.

Innocent children are exposed to a lot of content they can’t control on a site like this. Take for example, a 40 year old pedophile who finds a 12 year old girl’s page. Bam. That’s the beginning of a laundry list of inappropriate comments made by a man who can see or say anything without fear of being discovered.

Imagine someone walking into a public place like a school wearing a paper bag over their head shouting harassing commentary at innocent victims passing by. We would not allow that. We would be appalled. We would demand action to be taken. We would expect discipline to follow.

Ask.fm not only allows this type of outrageous kind of behavior, but it also supports it. And no one seems to care that helpless people are being victimized.

If you look at any random Ask.fm account, chances are, it will be covered in harassments. The account was designed for teens to ask their friends questions, but most things on there are just “comments”- ones that can be described as obscene, abusive, inappropriate, and crude. Sounds like the perfect place for an 11 year old, right?

Ask.fm has no privacy features. Each account has its own link and anyone can view it whether the account owner wants them to or not. Though Ask.fm has a feature which allows a user not to allow anonymous questions in the settings of an account, using the website at all simply supports the tendancy for negative behavior.

There are a lot of petitions online encouraging the termination of website. According to Change.org, each has about 9,000 signatures. That should give an idea on how many people who believe this website will do and does more harm than good.

Though the website was a great idea at the onset, it has been ruined by people who lack respect for others and it is now a home for cyber bullies.
Ask.fm is responsible for impacting the lives of hundreds of children and teens in the world in a negative way. Support those whose lives have been distressed by this website by omitting the use of it.