What Every Parent Should Know About Formspring: The New Cyberscourge for Teens
Last week, a Long Island high school senior committed suicide, and the website Formspring.me is suspected as a cause. Yet most parents don’t even know it exists. Formspring is the latest cyberscourge for teens. It lets you open an account and allows your anonymous audience – usually your classmates – to communicate with brutal honesty. By which I mean breathtaking cruelty.
Formspring takes cybercruelty to a new low by making it appear consensual. You sign up for your own account, literally inviting others to bash you with their “honest” opinions. Because it appears consensual, it no longer seems like cybercruelty at all. It just becomes another avenue for teens to communicate, and it desensitizes them to what they’re doing.
“I hate you,” writes one peer.
“You’re slutty,” opines another.
Account holders are always able to respond, and most act as if they don’t care.
“I’d f*** you,” muses one.
“thanks I mean very blunt but still flattering,” responds the account holder.
Remember, these are often friends writing the comments. To wit:
“I’ve known you for a long time. you’re not even that good at soccer. you just had one really good season…”
As you might expect, cyberbombs like this usually launch the account holder into an extended freak out about who could have written it. Imagine walking the halls or sitting in class, never knowing who is saying what on your Formspring. Not exactly conducive to good focus on your studies, if you get my drift.
I suspect girls are especially vulnerable to Formspring for several reasons:
1. Most girls are passionately invested in their friendships and what others think of them. At the same time, they constantly second guess their peers about what they really think and mean. As I showed in The Curse of the Good Girl, the ubiquity of “just kidding” and the pressure to keep friendships conflict-free force lots of truth underground. Girls know it. Formspring gives you a perverse chance to “really find out what others think of you.”
2. Many girls define social success as being liked by everyone. Despite my best efforts as a speaker, educator and mentor to tell girls that it just ain’t gonna happen, Formspring lets hope spring eternal: you can open an account and maybe, just maybe, you won’t get a mean comment. You’ll be that girl who everyone really loves!
There is zero, and I mean zero, value in this website and no girl or boy should spend a minute on it. Formspring creates unnecessary emotional risks. It legitimizes cybercruelty and divorces kids from responsibility for their words. You can pretty much file Formspring along with wouldn’t-it-be-fun-to-stand-on the-railroad-tracks-and-jump-right-before-the-train-comes and I’m-sure-no-one-will-notice-if-I-just-pocket-this-one-mascara.
So what to do? Here’s what I suggest. Start a conversation with your daughter about Formspring. Ask her if people at school use it (don’t start off by grilling her about what she does or she may scare and fly away). Ask her what she thinks of it. Then ask her if she uses it.
If she says yes, tell her she’s banned for life from the website. Period. Here’s what I tell kids when I suggest they to stop using it:
1. It’s an invitation for people to be evil to each other without taking responsibility, which means people will exaggerate and even outright lie just to hurt you.
2. By inviting people to say harmful things to you, and spending time reading about it, you disrespect yourself.
3. There will always be haters. You will never be someone who is 100% liked by everyone. That doesn’t mean you need to set up a website to catalog who those people are. Focus on the relationships that bring you happiness and security, not people who tear you down.
Even if your daughter says no one has ever said anything mean to her, hold your ground. It’s only a matter of time.
If your daughter denies having an account, open your own account here (it’s very easy) and begin searching for your daughter by her name. Most kids include their full names in their accounts.
If you know me, you know I’m not in the habit of telling you to go behind your kid’s back. You can imagine how dangerous I find this website if I’m urging you to do it at all.
Listen to what I have to say to girls about Formspring in this episode of BFF 2.0.
I am 14 and had a FormSpring for about 4-5 months, I saw an older girl I knows FormSpring and began checking hers to see what gossip was being spread… After a while I made an account for myself and was quickly receiving hateful comments, many times I cried because of these comments and people even were cruel enough to go on and pretend to be my best friends saying rude stuff about me. Some of the “questions” were actually really personal and some were super sexual, people were putting me and my friends on blast for things that weren’t true at all or that nobody was supposed to ever know. About a week or two ago my mother found my FormSpring and told me to immediately delete it for life. Having a FormSpring ruined the trust my mother used to have for me because she saw questions about my boyfriend and my friends on my account. FormSpring quickly turned from a fun way to see what was going on in peoples lives to a sick obsession with being tormented by so called anonymous people who were actually my classmates. I wish I had never used Formspring…
Formspring is not only extremely stupid and a complete waste of time, but I think it is totally evil how the website creators make it impossible to delete your account and you can only de-activate it. This, along with being anonymous makes teens into complete point-blank range targets for some of the worst unimaginable hate and bullying I’ve ever seen. I used to have Formspring, but I closed my account 5 months ago and I’m never going back. I’ll definitely never want to go back to that dumb, evil website. One of my good friends committed suicide on 4/7/2011, and he had a FS account. I don’t know if it was Formspring that caused it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. It is already a terrible experience being bullied online (WAY WORSE than in person), but it is even worse if the hate leads to killing yourself or other people. Columbine Massacre happened way before there was such thing as cyberbullying, but imagine if it happened today… The easiest way to get rid of the online torture is to get off that site and stay off it forever.
Hi Matt. I would be grateful if we could talk about your experience. I’m a reporter for The Washington Post, exploring FormSpring and would love if we could chat over phone or email. Thank you so much in advance.
Thank you much, Cecilia Kang
voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech
kangc [at] washpost [dot] com
202-334-4367
Bullying is going to be present no matter what type of medium you have. If formspring is removed, then the bullying will take another form in another medium. It seems as though people just blame things like formspring because it is easy to. Bullying happens at school, does this mean school causes bullying. This is the same with formspring, formspring does not cause bullying. If a person wants to bully someone, they will bully someone no matter how they go about doing so.
The point of this article is that formspring bullying is anonymous! Unfortunately, bullying is a part of life that isn’t going away anytime soon. If people say hateful things about you in person, you can at least know who they are and avoid them. If it is on formspring, you don’t know who sent it and it can make a kid paranoid to know that someone dislikes them enough to take the time and torment them anonymously. That might be mental torture for someone who used to think they were well-liked. Some online social media outlets are totally useless and this is one of the worst.
I am 14 years old, and I have recentley lost a friend due to cyberbullying. In the past couple of days, i looked at her formspring page and i found comments like,”you’re a wh*re. I hope you die.” or,”why are you such a worthless slut.”
To all you cyberbullys: You are the reason my friend is dead. Do you feel better about yourself now?
This site sure has made girls cry, self harm, and even take their own lives. This is not okay. Formspring is a nightmare.
i am 14 years old and i have formspring,yes,you do get horrible questions like ‘ugly’ ‘fat’ by annonymous people,but..you can change your settings so you can only recieve questions from people who leave their name.Today i deleted my formspring account because i think its a complete waste of time,i think formspring should get banned.
Hi Danielle. I”m a reporter for The Washington Post. I’m so sorry to hear about your loss. I am writing a story about Formspring and cyberbullying. I would like to chat with you about your experience and your thoughts about the site.
Thank you
Cecilia Kang
kangc [at] washpost [dot] com
202-334-4367
voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech
You should educate your kids about cyberbullying and sites like this. Also, educate them that peers that call them ‘fat’ or ‘slut’, or any other words have very low self esteem, that’s why they do that. I’ve been in cyber world for a long time, and have ‘seen’, ‘heard’ stuff that I wish I wouldn’t hear. Talking about yourself in public virtually can hurt you big time in real life. You should never disclose any real info about yourself and try not to tell too many details from your private real life. Some people feed from this, and they will write everything down, and haunt you down with the details that you disclosed a while back. They will find your real name, your e-mail, even mailing address and real phone number, and then just watch out. It’s actually easy these days, just go to FB, White Pages, etc, and all info about you is there if you’re not careful. I found it out a hard way, and I will do everything in my power to educate my daughter about how dangerous Internet can be.
I get what she’s saying. But i think she means anonymous. You don’t have to except anonymous comments. Even if a person logged on, & if they don’t want you to know who it is, as long as your not excepting anonymous comments. & if you are, you DON’T have to accept them. Just delete them.
First and foremost, adults (especially women where girls are concerned and for whom we are role models) MUST not bully each other or children. Bullying is an adult dirty little secret. It occurs through gossip, exclusion, undermining co-workers, family members, friends, using hostile tone of voice, put downs, blame, shaming, gestures, looks, veiled intentions, comments, flirting with significant others’ of acquaintances, friends, family members, and by contributing to a toxic and hostile social fabric by being impatient and pushy during a typical day with cashiers, other citizens, by evading taxes, making illegal deals, trying to get away with not paying for this that or the other, being dishonest with others, systems, and self. Until we adults live mindfully and with care in each breath we take, children will learn from us how to malign, bully, and saturate the social air with narcissistic and hostile behaviour and intention. It is up to us — teachers, parents, all adults to live better for the sake of the children.
When i am at school and i check my hotmail and see that an anoynomous person has asked me a question on formspring i automatically become obssessed with finding out what this anon person thinks of me. I wouldn’t say i’m vein or anything, but it’s human nature to be curious about what other people think about us as individuals. Many teenage girls thrive from nice compliments and depend on people telling them they like or approve of their actions, to be told that “you’re a slut” or to be called “fat” by someone is a big ego crusher, sure there are some of us who will brush it off or laugh but i think it takes a very strong and confident girl to do that, and that is something that does not come naturally to us especially not in this day (where such sites as formspring exsist). Fair enough if you can brush the negative comments off, you are a much stronger person than the majority of us… but for the rest formspring is a guilty pleasure of ego crushing comments. And it was a disaster that this site was even accomplished. It is a site where cowards gather and people who are not satisfied or happy with their own lives come to make someone else feel bad. It makes them feel big, but in reality it’s sad. Extremely sad how we should let this site carry on
Hi Yasmine. I’m a reporter for The Washington Post, writing a story about Formspring and would be grateful if we could talk more about your thoughts and experience on the site. I can be reached at the email/phone below.
Thank you,
Cecilia Kang
202.334.4367
kangc [at] washpost [dot] com
voices [at] washingtonpost [dot] com/posttech
My daughter was set up on formspring by a bully who wrote comments about herself that she was sure the whole crowd would think came from my daughter. Bully girl and her mother backed down when I told them to call the police for an investigation of harassment. This is a terrible site…prime for cyberbullying.
Dear Katherine:
I’m a reporter for The Washington Post, writing a story about Formspring and would be grateful if we could talk more about your thoughts and experience on the site. I can be reached at the email/phone below.
Thank you,
Cecilia Kang
202.334.4367
kangc [at] washpost [dot] com
voices [at] washingtonpost [dot] com/posttech
One form of communication through formspring that hasn’t been mentioned is guys and or girls asking anonymous questions such as “do you masturbate?” sexual comments like they see you undress in your window etc. Girls between the ages of 13 to 17 think they are not engaging in perversion, which is what it is. They answer with “omgosh, etc” Sadly they are flattered that someone thinks they are attractive. How do we address this?
Truthfully, even though the girls think the attention is flattering – why can’t they have the dignity to say “gross” and get off the site? what pulls them back?
Wait a second; you can always delete bad comments and questions. Then twitter and YouTube share the same thing. I think we must think carefully of why formspring was created! As an artist, people and fans asks me about the tool I use and how I became good in drawing. Another bright side, in youtube I get millions of questions and I can’t reply the same thing over and over, but in formspring it’s a resource to all the questions that people are seeking for. Anything can be harmful and beneficial in people’s eyes. Just know what’s the right thing and go for it.
I agree, it’s good for adults not young teenagers whom have no need for this site and no need to allow people to bash or use hateful words. Yes they could just delete the stipid questions they get, but after seeing my daughters formspring, teenagers don’t have the smarts yet to ignore and delete these usless comments. Just stay away from this site, it is the biggest waist of any tenagers time. Find a better way to find yourself.
While comments can be deleted the damage is done to the vulnerable teenage mind. As for the original reason it was created, there are many examples of things throughout history where something was created for the benefit of mankind but mankind itself has twisted the original intention to harm others. We as a race are wonderful innovators when it comes to causing harm. Until we can police websites so that they are used for their original intent it is best to keep parents and others who care about our children informed which is what I feel is the original intent of this post we are writing about.
Wait a second; you can always delete bad comments and questions. Then twitter and YouTube share the same thing. I think we must think carefully of why formspring was created! As an artist, people and fans asks me about the tools I use and how I became good in drawing. Another bright side, in youtube I get millions of questions and I can’t reply the same thing over and over, but formspring acts as a resource to all the questions that people are seeking for. Anything can be harmful and beneficial in people’s eyes. Just know what’s the right thing and go for it.
i have just found out my daughter has been threatened on formspring tonight – not only by being threatened by a fight by apparent school colleagues, but by stabbing. what site is this to allow cowardly people to threaten others by cyberbullying?? if people cannot manage the site with respect and with full openess, it should be shut down. we are actively encouraging mental abuse by not doing something about this site.
My daughter was being harassed–I went on there to ask the harasser to stop. The harassers MOM used her formspring to threaten ME!!!
Dear Raysgaff:
I’m sorry to hear about your daughter. I’m a reporter for The Washington Post, writing a story about Formspring and would be grateful if we could talk more about your thoughts and experience on the site. I can be reached at the email/phone below.
Thank you,
Cecilia Kang
202.334.4367
kangc [at] washpost [dot] com
voices [at] washingtonpost [dot] com/posttech
hey everybody i just want to say formspring might be a little mean sometimes to some people but who cares about what haters think its stuped the website is fun cuz sometimes you get to express things that you are afraid to say like if you have a crush on someone and stuff and you can also make jokes with your friends and stuff and i think you guys are overreacting by banning the website its just stupid and exagerated let your kids know what to do and moms its not true that everyone gets rude or mean comments i mean you get one once in a while but thats not the main point of the website its not like a just rude and harmful comment site it just happends sometimes it also depends on your reputation cuz you should see what your daughters are doing to get those mean comments before banning a freakin website they are probably being called sluts? you maybe would like to know why
I know why my daughter is being called nasty names–because the girls doing it are threatened by her and are jealous of her!! She is the new girl in town trying to make friends, all the boys like her–the girls are nasty and most of them are years older than her! I have read through soooo many of the pages over the past few days and found about 90% of it to be name calling, bullying, harassment, and NUMEROUS threats of physical violence! I will report this everyday until these people learn to monitor their site!
Kristin–are you an insane mother?! Or are you trying to be your daughter’s friend? Get your child off of this site! All boys like her for a reason–they are teenage boys. The girls are nasty? Poor girl that has a mother that allows her daughter to be harassed. This site doesn’t need to to be monitored–this child does.
wow i dnt think that formspring should be a bad thing i j ust dnt no why people mabye thety should put a lock on anon people.
Just found this…forgot I posted on this. LOL!! Have to laugh at twenty something…wow! I posted here regarding monitoring the comments on my daughter’s formspring and reporting threats and such and I am told my child needs monitored?? Reading comprehension issues? I think so but thanks for the childish advice my dear. As I stated, I reported to formspring the things I was seeing–on my daugher’s and on her friends. Then my daughter closed her account! BTW, the reason I knew about it was because I was monitoring her computer use and because she is open about it with me–hopefully you can have the kind of relationship I have with my daughter with your own child one day! Might want to drop the judgmental attitude and learn to think first!
Yeah, people are immature and stupid, by posting really mean things on people Formspring, but come on it’s high school students, what do you expect? Although it’s pretty pathetic to kill yourself because of what someone thinks of you. So what if someone thinks that about you, brush it off and move on. It’s never made me paranoid about who said something bad about me, I honestly don’t care if they don’t like me. I like me and plenty of others do too. I’m pretty sure I could list 1,000 better reasons to kill yourself.
I also used formspring and my mother found out but she did the EXACT thing that someone shouldnt do. when i had mine, at first ppl were nice but then ppl started saying “FAT SLUT” and other hurtful things. My cousin gave me advice to delete but i didnt listen and then i was rlly badly hurt about what ppl said. My cousin also said one of her friends called her in the middle of the night during the summer sobbing that some other person was going out with this girls boyfriend. my cousin also told her to delete it and she did and everything was better for her. but kids shouldnt use it.
Eh, I don’t know, I kind of agree and kind of disagree. I feel that Formspring is exactly as you described — it lowers one’s dignity, encourages cruelty and makes us paranoid. I’ve been wanting to get a Formspring for awhile, so I decided to google it and see what the online world thought (even though I knew it’d be bad things, which is kinda what it’d be like to get a Formspring).
So anyway, I came across this article, and I think it’s a bit silly that you want parents to ban the site. Like the other girl said, we’re teenagers who can make their own decision. And in this generation, online freedom means a lot to us. By allowing us to create Formspring accounts, no matter how hurtful they can be, you’re allowing us to exercise our rights as young adults. But yeah, I’d discourage getting one, they only lead to broken hearts.
I think you are right in someways. This site can make some people very sad or create emotional scars. However I don’t think this is a reason good enough to ban the whole site. As it was said before, when you can go to settings, you can stop anonymous questions coming. Or ban somebody. If you are afraid of the bad comments that can come to your page, then don’t get a formspring account to begin with. We, the formspring users, are aware of the fact that we might get stupid and hurtful questions from other people. We get our accounts ready to face those comments. Also, formspring is not an evil site. It lets you to express yourself and have fun. I, personally, do like formspring a lot. And i have got hundreds of bad posts until now. However, they don’t interest me since they are just ordinary stuff idiot people write. I don’t even care. And most of the people don’t either. If they do care about insults, they should close their accounts. Done. It will end everything. So I think that this site may be very harmful to extremely sensitive people so they just shouldn’t get accounts. However, because that some people might get hurt,you can not ban the site.
People can be cruel.
Emotionally damaged and immature kids can be particularly vicious.
But this seems silly to me.
I don’t see how formspring is so different from any other social networking site.
Maybe this was different when the entry was written, but now there seem to be decent privacy controls to restrict access.
If you have idiot people following a name around the internet then … that’s what happens.
I can see how formspring could be an interesting and worthwhile, assuming a token maturity of people involved.
The cruelty seems to be a youth culture/phenomenon grown up around a site.
I question how related to the actual forum it is; If the design some how encourages this?
Again I’m skeptical.
Seriously? I fit the profile of “a teenage girl” that you talk about, and I don’t care at all if some anonymous person writes hateful comments about me. I have a formspring account because I want to, not because of my peers. Not only this, but you can block anonymous people from contacting you. Do that if anything. It should be between us if we want to use the site, it’s fun. It’s entertaining. Not everything people say on there is bad. If a single parent doesn’t like it, they can try to stop their kids from using it. That’s all. Quit trying to ban an entire site because of your stupid opinions.
it’s not just a single parent that is against this site, though…hundreds of thousands are! and, i am too! i’m fifteen as well, and to be honest, i’m not willing to surrender all of the self-worth, dignity and honor i have by getting a formspring. how is the site entertaining? how is it fun? i honestly c no value in it! comments may not hurt u, but it hurts the majority of us! teenagers, unfortunately, become paranoid, anxious, and depressed from these sites, up to the point where they kill themselves! y risk it? y put urself in that position? if u want to ask someone a question, use facebook, use twitter, but by getting a formspring and waiting to hear all of the things people say about u, ur clearly stating to the world “i am disrespecting myself and am very self-conscious about what other people think.” and if u do block anonymous people from leaving comments, then still, what’s the point of having one? there is none. and we all have opinions here, and i respect yours, but please don’t call other people’s opinions “stupid.” its quite disrespectful and pretty immature.