How one teen's app could stop cyberbullying at its source
Trisha Prabhu says kids aren't evil 鈥� they just don't know how to stop and think before hitting 'send' on a cruel message. Enter: ReThink.
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Have you ever done or said something and wished you could take it back? Cyber bullying is a bigger problem than you think. There is a solution. ReThink about it...
TEDx
Fifteen-year-old Trisha Prabhu thinks ending cyberbullying in teens may be as easy as asking people to stop and rethink before sending a potentially hurtful message.
The solution may sound naive, but she has data on her side: last year, she developed a called ReThink that did just that. When forced to slow down and think, kids reduced their willingness to send mean-spirited messages by 93 percent.
Now, her technology is on the cusp of becoming available for download: It will launch this week as an add-on for multiple internet platforms,
The release caps off two years of labor, starting in 2013 when Ms. Prabhu read about the suicide of a 12-year-old following cyberbullying attacks.
鈥淚鈥檝e been coding from a very young age. I love using my technology skills,鈥� said Prabhu, whose parents are computer scientists, . 鈥淪o I thought, OK, I know how to code. I know that [fighting cyberbullying] is something I鈥檓 passionate about. Let me try and fuse them together to see if I can make a difference.鈥�
While conducting research for a science project at her suburban Chicago high school, she found that 12-18-year-olds were 40 percent more willing to send hurtful messages than older age groups.
The adolescent brain is like a car with no brakes, she said in a 2014聽. That discovery by neuroscientists confirmed Prabhu鈥檚 suspicion that 鈥渒ids are not mean devils that run around with cruel intentions鈥� 鈥撀爐hey are less able to slow down and think before acting.
Working off the hypothesis that putting brakes on the teenage brain would result in better decision-making on social media, Prabha developed ReThink.
The software scans message drafts for language that may be offensive or cruel, drawing from data, and prompts a warning when a user hits 鈥渟end.鈥� It gives users the option to reconsider with聽a message like, 鈥淭his message may be harmful to others. Are you sure you want to post this message?鈥�
In trials she ran at school, the 71 percent of subjects who were willing to post a hurtful message without the pop-up warning dropped to 4 percent when the warning was added.
鈥淚 was shocked,鈥� she told MTV News. 鈥淚 thought there might be a bit of a change, but part of me thought teens would think it was so stupid that they would feel even more encouraged to post [a hurtful] message.... I realized I鈥檇 stumbled onto something that could change the game in cyberbullying.鈥�
Identifying hateful terms in message drafts may not catch subtler instances of bullying, but the organization NoBullying found that in 2014, 1 in 10 middle school and high school students have been on the
Prabhu emphasizes Rethink鈥檚 attitude of prevention: stopping bullying at the source, before it happens, rather than putting the burden on victims to report an incident once the damage has already been done 鈥� a tactic she found many social media platforms to encourage, which she found troubling. 鈥淏ecause 90 percent of the time the victims don鈥檛 tell anyone,鈥� she told MTV News.
鈥淰ery rarely in this connected world do we remember we need to slow down, pause, think about what we're doing,鈥� she said in the TEDxTeen talk. 鈥淲e鈥檙e posting a message, and that has significance.鈥�