Push to Ban Formspring

Adolescent harassment has been out of control with assistance from social networking websites on the Internet. Teenagers and young adults have been using the accessibility of the World Wide Web to harass their fellow peers, but some have taken their cruel remarks to an unfortunate and awful level.

On a new website called Formspring, despicable comments have been posted to teenagers anonymously by their peers, and now, after only five months of Formspring being launched, a young girl named Alexis Pilkington has taken her own life.

The damaging remarks were one huge factor that led to Pilkington's untimely death. Questions have been raised on whether charges should be pressed against posters if their identity is discovered, but I believe that the answer should be obvious: charges need to be pressed, or something needs to be done.
Formspring, a social networking site that allows a person to post anonymous questions and comments to others, was launched on Nov. 25, 2009. What was intended to be a fun and unique way to learn new things about people is now a harbor for harassment and awful remarks and threats against peers, mostly teenagers.
Pilkington was a stranger to me, but her story immediately got my attention. She was a 17-year-old girl from West Islip. She was a soccer star with the promises of success. She was harassed by cyber bullies and could not handle the offenses. Her parents do not entirely blame Formspring for their daughter's death, and it has been reported that Alexis previously had gone to therapy, but I believe that Formspring was a major reason for the suicide of Alexis Pilkington.
Also currently in the news, three teenagers are being charged with the suicide of a 15-year-old Massachusetts girl. The three teens, Sean Mulveyhill, Kayla Narey, and Austin Renaud harassed and threatened young Phoebe Prince offline, and they are being criminally charged with her death. If these three people can be charged for Phoebe's death, the people responsible for Alexis's death should receive the same punishments.

If charges cannot be pressed, then Formspring should be carefully revised. Although the creators of the website did not intend for such harassments and threats on their site, that is exactly what has happened.
I am an active social network Website user, and I was one of the first teenagers to create an account with Formspring in my Long Island community. I was asked interesting questions and even received compliments, but I was not oblivious to the other pages that I saw.

I saw these awful things being said to my peers from my peers, and I knew that this website was bad news. I deactivated my Formspring account after two weeks of joining the social networking Website. I did not want to receive negative comments, and I did not want to lose my morality and fall to the despicability of harassing and threatening the peers in my community.

Alexis's death helped confirm my reasoning for deactivating my Formspring Account. I hope that someone is held responsible for this young girl's death, and I hope that cyber bullying, especially on Formspring, will somehow be controlled.

Even though I don't believe that Formspring can be shut down because of this incident, I would be satisfied to see the removal of the Website from the Internet. I plead for teenagers to boycott this website, not in anger against the creators, but in honor of Alexis Pilkington and any other teenagers who have committed suicide due to harassment by peers.

Ginette Redmond is a journalism student at Sachem High School North.