Matthew Homyk was murdered by bullies at the age of 14. The teen from Brunswick, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland) was terrorized on an anonymous post-heavy site frequented by the over-13 crowd, called Ask.fm. After seeing enough nameless posts of negativity, the young man ended his life.
Though this website’s FAQ page specifies that users can control what is seen and what they see (by changing their profiles and preferences), and encourages parents and users to speak up when bullying occurs, we all know it is not possible to monitor everything that gets posted. Besides, with this type of posting allowed, with no posters’ identities to be traced and no repercussions, I can’t imagine the site being used for anything but negativity, rumors and lies. The point is, users can say anything and remain anonymous, so unless you are certain that only your friends will post positive things, blocking anonymous posts is, essentially, blocking all contact with your peers. The bullies know this, and they exploit it.
Also, answers by the staff at Ask.fm saying “we will do what we can” to the question “How do you know if a user is over 13 years old?” does not offer hope that anything can be done to prevent younger school-age children from making the site a destructive dung heap of psychologically crippling hate. All they have to do is subtract 13 from the current year and lie.
It makes me sick to read about victims and their families and, unfortunately, the media tends to focus on them exclusively. What I would like to see is one gutsy media resource who will strap on a pair and call out the bullies for their side of the story. I would like to hear from Matthew’s tormentors, and I have a ton of questions I would like them to answer.
As we look at what bullying does to our society, it seems as if being a bully is a direct path to terrorism, subversive and even criminal behavior, yet we don’t seem to work on obliterating it at its source: the impressionable young who jockey for their places in the pecking order of life. Some of them win by honest, fair play: the rest by intimidation and death. Look at any terror leader, standing at a lectern warbling about war and destruction, and behind it all you see the playground bully lording over the schoolyard while the families of the oppressed children stand by and sigh, “kids will be cruel.”
Wake up! We are the ones who can stop kids being cruel. It’s time to look at this scourge for what it is and put an end to it.
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