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A teenage girl who committed suicide after being bullied online sent most of the hateful comments to herself, bosses at the social network site Ask.fm have claimed.

Hannah Smith, 14, from Leicestershire, England, killed herself two weeks ago after apparently suffering months of abuse at the hands of online bullies who told her to kill herself, cut herself and “drink bleach”.

Whether or not this is true is at this point rather meaningless. What is more important is that this child apparently killed herself because of something that happened or maybe didn't happen online.

After reading about this tragedy, the first thought that popped into my mind was: "Why oh why didn't this child simply logout instead of suffering this abuse?"

Then I got to thinking ... this is the 21st century and smart phones, tablets, computers are to teenagers today what the telephone, facsimile & snail mail were to kids in my youth. So logging out or not being on social sites would today be like in our day never leaving your home or inter-acting with other teenagers face to face.

The owners of these internet sites now have an awesome responsibility towards the

21stC kids to ensure that online abuse is curbed or else governments will have to take some sort of action.

Personally I hate any form of censorship but in this case I would be happy to have some sort of restriction put in place.

What do you think?

Young people need an adult in their lives whom they trust and respect, even now. This adult would ideally be a parent or a teacher. This would be the person to confide in and find a way to deal with bullies. Also this person would help build her/his self-confidence.

For some reason, bullies think they are cool. They are not. I know, I know, bullies like to use the word "snitch" when they are found out, but so what? That's just another way they bully.



It seems we need some kind of campaign against this behavior. Young people are getting hurt, and dying.

I think "A teenage girl who committed suicide after being bullied online sent most of the hateful comments to herself, bosses at the social network site Ask.fm have claimed." should be thoroughly investigated. If they are lying, they must be shut down. If they can prove this is true..............words escape me.