English School Girls Being Shamed on 'Gossip Girl' Instagram Accounts

Wikipedia

The main problem with the age of social media is that it does give way to bullying and harassment. Many people might use sites like Tumblr and Twitter as escapes from the real world where they feel they're badly treated but unfortunately for some social media can be hell. Instagram should be a site where people can share their personal photos and receive positive comments but instead they're being used by some English school kids, especially in the Doncaster area, to spread gossip.

There has been a recent trend in making accounts similar to the gossip website in the hit tv and book series Gossip Girl. In the series the anonymous owner of the site would post pictures and stories sharing the gossip of the rich teenagers populating the city. People would be alerted to a new post by text message and of course, the gossip would quickly spread. In real life we have Instagram accounts and push notifications and half the time the gossip isn't even close to the truth.

These accounts ask people to direct message them pictures - usually of girls - which they post with messages talking about their sexual promiscuity. Most of these are unlikely to be true but  once the word is out there people will start to believe it and talk about it. A lot of these pictures are going to be 11 to 15 year olds, people who aren't even legally old enough to be partaking in this sort of thing. Yes, rumours about girls who do this and that when they wouldn't even think about it have been spreading around schools forever and hell, before this you might have people posting messages about girls on Bebo with what they'd like to do to them just to take the mickey but these accounts take that to the next level. The pictures I've seen have been SFW however some of the private accounts suggest they might not be. It's incredibly worrying that something like this has become the latest social media fad. Teenagers are told to be careful but that doesn't stop someone from taking a perfectly innocent picture and sharing it with an inappropriate message.

Many of the accounts are private or do simply not have any pictures on them at the moment. It seems likely that they were reported and deleted even though many of their bios request people don't do that. Almost everything about these accounts is anonymous from who posts them to who sends the actual pictures in and it's only the names of people in the pictures that aren't. This makes it difficult for the police and the schools to track exactly who is posting them but they are looking into it. These accounts are a bad idea so if you come across one then please report them and be supportive of any of the teenagers who have had their pictures posted on there. Sites like this work along the same lines as things like revenge porn and that's illegal now for a reason.


 Rosina Brooker

Rosina is a Songbird rookie with a degree in Creative Writing. She's trying to focus on her novel on the side but is hoping that Content Writing will turn out to be a good career choice in the mean time! Follow her @RosinaAtSMF

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