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	John Meagher uncovers a sinister side to the website blamed for causing yet another teen suicide</h2>
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		On the face of it, it is difficult to understand why Ask.fm has become a teen sensation. The website is based on the rudimentary premise of users being asked questions &ndash; any question &ndash; which they may or may not choose to respond to. It is hardly a groundbreaking idea.</h2>
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		Yet, such a basic concept appears to have captured the imagination of young people around the world. One million new users are signing up to Ask.fm every week and many of them are Irish children.</p>
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		The&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Latvia" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; color: rgb(92, 139, 63);">Latvia</a>-based website claims to have 60 million users &ndash; up from five million in April 2012 &ndash; and its&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/iPhone" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; color: rgb(92, 139, 63);">iPhone</a>app is consistently in the top 10 downloads on&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Apple,_Inc." style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; color: rgb(92, 139, 63);">Apple</a>&#39;s app store, often ahead of more established brands such as&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/YouTube" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; color: rgb(92, 139, 63); margin-bottom: 0px !important;">YouTube</a>&nbsp;or Twitter.</p>
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		It has become a money-spinner, too, with estimates suggesting it is raking in at least &euro;500,000 per month in advertising revenue.</p>
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		But a spate of teen suicides &ndash; purportedly inspired by the abuse received on the site &ndash; has put Ask.fm in the news again. The father of the latest victim, 14-year-old Hannah Smith, from Leicestershire in England, called for its closure this week.</p>
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		And his sentiments have been echoed by Jonathan Pugsley, whose daughter,&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Ciara_(musician)" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; color: rgb(92, 139, 63); margin-bottom: 0px !important;">Ciara</a>&nbsp;(15), hanged herself near her home in Dromahair, Co Leitrim, last September after being bullied by posters on Ask.fm.</p>
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		&quot;This is a site,&quot; he said, &quot;where people can post anonymously whatever they want and get away with it.&quot;</p>
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		Ciara&#39;s death marked the first time many people had ever heard of Ask.fm, which was launched in June 2010, but within months it would be cited as a contributory cause in the suicide of 13-year-old Donegal girl Erin Gallagher. The tragedy was compounded when her sister Shannon subsequently killed herself.</p>
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		And, this week, negative publicity has prompted several companies and charities&ndash; including Specsavers,&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Vodafone" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; color: rgb(92, 139, 63);">Vodafone</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Save_the_Children" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; color: rgb(92, 139, 63); margin-bottom: 0px !important;">Save the Children</a>&nbsp;&ndash; to withdraw advertising from the site.</p>
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		Yet, amid all the talk, few seem to understand what makes Ask.fm tick. One need only spend a couple of hours perusing it, to get a sense of why it has become a magnet for school children, especially teenage girls.</p>
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		First, you need to sign up. It&#39;s a process that takes less than a minute, especially as so little personal information is required.</p>
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		A working email is essential, but after that you can be as honest with your real identity as you like.</p>
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			A simple geographical word search can put the user in contact with teens from around the country. I search among several Irish towns and happen upon scores of users who are content to post their actual names, photos and&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Facebook" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; color: rgb(92, 139, 63); margin-bottom: 0px !important;">Facebook</a>&nbsp;links.</p>
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			A cursory perusal through their &quot;answers&quot; see them reveal information about their school, class, address (right down to street), their siblings&#39; names and their parents&#39; occupations as well as intimate details about classmates and neighbours.</p>
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			It&#39;s astonishing &ndash; and alarming &ndash; to see how open they are with very personal information.</p>
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			Some seem content to talk about their drinking habits, sexual status and their immediate plans.</p>
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			It would be very easy to construct an elaborate picture of their lives and one shudders to think how such information could be put to use.</p>
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			It has to be said that a large proportion of the content on Ask.fm is perfectly innocent and resembles little more than enthusiastic conversation between friends, albeit of the virtual kind. &quot;Do you play camogie?&quot; &quot;Are you going to the club on Saturday night?&quot; &quot;What is your favourite song ever?&quot; But there is also a significant amount of very lewd, graphic &quot;questions&quot; that are wholly inappropriate to be addressed to young teens.</p>
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			Even the most permissive society would baulk at 14-year-olds being asked for their favourite sexual position or which boy in their class they last fellated.</p>
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			This week, as Review looked at the site, one particular schoolgirl in a rural part of&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Leinster_Rugby" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; color: rgb(92, 139, 63); margin-bottom: 0px !important;">Leinster</a>&nbsp;was struggling to fend off unwelcome attention. Her 3,500 answers were indicative of just how much time she spends on the site. She appeared to be bombarded with explicit messages on a daily basis and her increasingly frustrated answers suggested the line of questioning was getting to her.</p>
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			Her youth is apparent, too, when she admits to not understanding what is being asked of her. Those questions cannot be reproduced in a family newspaper and should never have been addressed to a 15-year-old.</p>
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			And yet, incredibly, some of the content is more sinister than that. When I look through the timeline for several teenage girls throughout Ireland I see that many are constantly pestered to post nude photos of themselves on Snapchat &ndash; the controversial messaging service in which images &quot;disappear&quot; shortly after being sent.</p>
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			I even happen upon cases where an anonymous questioner leaves a mobile phone number for his target to text explicit photos to. A&nbsp;<a href="http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Google_Inc." style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; color: rgb(92, 139, 63); margin-bottom: 0px !important;">Google</a>&nbsp;search of this number reveals it has been posted to several different Ask.fm users.</p>
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			Spend any length of time on sites similar to Ask.fm and the spectre of grooming is never far away. One can&#39;t help but feel that it&#39;s not fellow teens who are asking the anonymous questions, but predatory adults who can&#39;t believe their luck that teens are being so free and easy with the information they provide.</p>
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			On the whole, the chat is good-natured and polite but it doesn&#39;t take long before you find comments likely to trouble even the most robust users. One girl in Dublin is taunted about the recent death of a close family member. &quot;HE&#39;S DEAD HAHA,&quot; writes a cruel poster.</p>
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			Another girl manages to attract the attention of a troll who keeps pressing her to commit suicide. &quot;You would be sorry if I did,&quot; she responds.</p>
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			Yet another finds herself having to defend the honour of her friend &ndash; who&#39;s named and described as &quot;a slut&quot; who has had sexual experiences with all the boys in her school year.</p>
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			Such comments haunt Maureen Bolger. Her son, Darren (16), killed himself in 2003 after suffering sustained bullying. Within three years, she had established a free phone service, Teenline Ireland (1800 833 634), to help secondary school children navigate that challenging period between adolescence and adulthood.</p>
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			&quot;Social media bullying is something we&#39;re hearing about more and more,&quot; she says. &quot;There&#39;s no getting away from it. You can&#39;t leave your problems at the school gate &ndash; the bullying follows you home.</p>
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			&quot;It&#39;s awful to look at the things that are written on that site and it&#39;s no surprise that it has been linked with several suicides already.</p>
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			&quot;It should be closed down &ndash; as should any site that allows people to post anonymous abuse like this. Why is it allowed to stay open? Is it always about profit?&quot;</p>
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			Clinical psychotherapist Joanna Fortune believes the wanton cruelty to be found on social media sites like Ask.fm stems from a generation of children who have grown up with the internet&#39;s &quot;virtual world&quot; and cannot see how their remarks can have such far-reaching ramifications.</p>
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			&quot;Those children who are growing up with smartphones and the capability of being online 24/7 can struggle to be empathetic,&quot; she says.</p>
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			&quot;Some are at such a remove that they actually don&#39;t know how to play in the old-fashioned sense of the word.</p>
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			&quot;Their relationships with others get very skewed to the point that they think it&#39;s fair game to say what they want. Some teens just don&#39;t seem to understand what they post online is archived forever and it&#39;s frightening to see how revealing they are about their lives. But banning is not the answer.&quot;</p>
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			Meanwhile, on Thursday, Mark and Ilja Terebin, the brothers who founded Ask.fm, broke their silence. &quot;We would like to reassure all users and parents of users that we are committed to ensuring that our site is a safe environment,&quot; they said in a statement. &quot;We will continue to work with the appropriate organisations to safeguard against bullying on Ask.fm</p>
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			&quot;The vast majority of our users are very happy teenagers, who use Ask.fm to converse with their peers around the world. Bullying is an age-old problem that we in no way condone - and while its evolution online is disturbing, it certainly is not unique to our site.&quot;</p>
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			<a href="http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/parents-battle-to-control-teens-online-29488277.html">http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/parents-battle-to-control-teens-online-29488277.html</a></p>
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