Confessions Pages: Cyberbullying and False Messaging
by Gigi Ooi
If you go to a high school or even a middle school in our current time, you are almost bound to come across a confessions page. Confessions pages can be defined as an online space where students anonymously express their emotions, beliefs, and troubles with their school community. Although it may not sound like it, confession pages can be a very harmful body as they promote the raging issues of cyberbullying and false messaging on social media.
According to the National Institutes of Health, it is common for one to act more intensely on social media. Why? Because of something called the online disinhibition effect. One of the factors that makes this effect true is anonymity, which is a factor we have to consider when we think of the cyberbullying that occurs on these confessions pages. These pages are everywhere. Before even making it halfway through my first year in high school, I came across my school grade’s confessions page. At first, I thought nothing of it. There was no harmful content, just a few hormonal teenagers sharing their overdramatized emotions. However, a few weeks later, one of my closest friends had been described as “annoying as fuck” in a post and had been told that she “needs to get off Instagram” as “no one wanted her there.”
This publication gained attraction, our classmates were liking the content as quick as a wink, and almost everyone in our grade with over 400 students knew about it. The worst part about it was that my friend was not the only victim of a hurtful confession on the page, as a few other students were also cyberbullied in different posts as well. The Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children states how cyberbullying has a strong correlation with depression and the Australian Human Rights Commission writes that the victims can easily experience emotional and physical harm, loss of self-esteem, feelings of shame and anxiety, concentration, and learning difficulties. We need to watch out for these confession pages because if we let these students get bullied, we are not doing our best to protect our bright next generation from the many mental health problems that are plaguing our population.
Confessions pages not only add to student cyberbullying but also to the concern of false messaging. After the cyberbullying incidents occurred, the health of my fellow high school students was threatened and we encountered a bombing threat that came in one of the confessions page’s posts. The post read that this anonymous person was going to bomb a men’s restroom at school the next day. I saw this post and felt scared about going to school, a feeling that I should not have to worry about. I told my mom about it and she had to email the principal who made sure there was a lot of extra security that next day. Luckily, the day was as normal as any other and no bomb was dropped anywhere in the school. After this post, this specific confessions page got taken down by Instagram because enough people had blocked and reported the account. Unfortunately, this did not stop the students from rapidly creating a new account for their confessions.
Following the creation of this new account, a new incident occurred where my biology teacher was called a “zesty pedo.” If you are not aware, the term “zesty” is used as a common slang term among teens nowadays to describe someone who exhibits signs of being part of the queer community. The term creates a stereotype of LGBTQ+ people and can be quite derogatory as it is normally used on people who are not queer, but are “jokingly” called zesty. My biology teacher was named a “pedo” or “pedophile” which is defined as a person who is sexually attracted to children. This is completely out-of-pocket as my biology teacher is a great person who has never done anything that could even relate to what a pedophile’s actions would be. Both terms were inappropriately used for my biology teacher as it is common knowledge that he has a wife he is happily married to, with two kids that are our age. Either way, putting the description of a “zesty pedo” on my teacher was completely wrong and it had the potential to ruin his career even though the information is false.
These incidents are not only happening at my school and we are not the only ones encountering the issues that confessions pages present. Livermore High School reported in late last year that they had a student who was heavily targeted by a confession account for no particular reason. The student said, “It basically turned into what I would call an outlet for anonymous hate speech and just a place that makes it so easy for somebody to say something that they would never say to someone’s face.” She elaborated, saying that even if the words written on the screen did not affect her, knowing that many others were reading this fake information about her, gave her a lot of anxiety.
Confessions pages can be mediums that promote great student-to-student online interactions. However, these pages can be hazardous for any teen’s mental or physical health. If you ever come across a confessions account that becomes harmful to any student, please block and report the page to prevent these types of incidents. In the difficult world we live in, we all have to support each other as best as we can and this is how we do that.
