Getting home after a football game and opening your social media, only to find something that makes your heart drop, almost like you are going down a roller coaster. Ask.FM is the source of many acts of cyber bullying, and some cases of sucide. Day after day kids are getting bullied and this app just adds to the mix.

It was a typical Friday night in September. I just got home from a football game. As usual I checked my social media and was about to go to bed when I noticed something strange. While I was scrolling through Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, I noticed on my newly downloaded app, Ask.FM, that I had some notifications. This was out of the ordinary since I didn’t open that app for over two days! When I clicked on that app to open it, It said that I had some answered questions, which was odd, because I never asked anyone on there anything.I clicked on the question notification and what I saw terrified me!

Someone was logged into my account, and was posting and asking horrific things onto other people’s accounts. The worst part of finding this out was that they put my name at the end of the question, so that they thought that it was me asking it. The part that scared me the most was that someone could do this to me, and the recipients of the message believed it. 

My first reaction was to breakdown. I was so angry and terrified! Many questions ran through my mind. Who could do this to me? Who did this to me? Why did someone do this to me? Those were some of the questions. I immediately told my closest friends at the time what was going on.I told them how I went home and was on my phone when I noticed the notification. They were very understanding and supportive, but I still struggled with this. I was very scared when it came to telling my parents. They would lecture me that I shouldn't have downloaded the app in the first place. After about a week, my mother asked me what was going on, because I wasn’t acting normal. I told her the whole story, and surprisingly she was very understanding and was not angry with me.

My next step was to find out who did this to me. Still to this day not knowing bothers me, but I have an idea on who it was. This event has changed me for the better, since I can see others’ perspectives when they are being bullied, and it’s not a fun task to deal with.

Ask.Fm has been the source of many teen sucides, cyberbullying cases, and it has hurt many teens and their families. Personally I would love to see this app get shut down. How would someone think teens asking each other questions was a good idea? Obviously we all know that not every teen is a perfect angel and will use this app responsibly. iTunes App store has taken many apps off such as Flappy bird. Flappy bird didn’t really ruin people’s lives, like Ask.Fm. I never want anyone to have to go through what I went through. I read a story about a girl who was being bullied on Ask.Fm and she believed the cruel things that people were saying, so she ended it. Her parents arw currently trying to get the Google and Apple app store to take Ask.Fm off, but the app itself refuses to get deleted.

Apps like these need to be taken off the app store, and we need to learn to stop bullying. No person should ever have to deal with getting picked or to dread waking up in the morning. Today I realize that I should not feel bad about myself but I should feel bad about how insecure the bully is. Bullies have nothing better to do, so they turn to bullying as their option. As Abraham Lincoln said, “I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.”