Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Ruy Lopes Pereira
"Go kill yourself!"
"Why are you still alive?"
"You are so ugly!"
Rebecca Sedwick, an 11-year-old girl from Florida,
received those mean, embarrassing, and hurtful messages
on her social media.
She was repeatedly cyberbullied for over a year and a half,
until one day she decided she couldn't take it anymore.
She jumped off of her town's water tower and killed herself.
Two years ago, I came home from school to read that story.
I was shocked, heartbroken, and angry.
How could a girl younger than myself be pushed to take her own life?
It was unacceptable,
and I decided right then and there
that the pain that Rebecca had endured needed to end,
but the damage was already done.
As a 15-year-old sophomore at Neuqua Valley High School,
right here in Naperville,
I know that each and every one of my peers are at risk
of being a perpetrator or a victim of cyberbullying,
and that's why I'm determined to stop it at the source,
before the damage is done.
Sadly, Rebecca's story is not the only one out there.
Megan Meier hung herself in her bedroom closet
three weeks before her 14th birthday.
She received messages on her MySpace account,
like, "The world would be a better place without you."
The damage was done and we lost Megan.
Tyler Clementi, 18 years old,
was just getting used to his new university life and his new gay identity,
until, one day, one of his roommates thought it would be funny
to stream a video of Tyler in one of his most intimate moments with his boyfriend
all over social media.
And, by the end of the day, Tyler had jumped off of the George Washington bridge
to his death.
The damage was done.
I so wish, more than anything else,
that I can make each and every perpetrator rethink what they did
when they were cyberbullying these victims.
I wish I could go back in time and go, "Hold on! Think about what you're doing!
Think about the consequences of the action you're about to take."
But what if I could?
Would Rebecca, Megan and Tyler still be alive today?
Cyberbullying is a huge problem.
Over 52% of adolescents in the US alone have experienced cyberbullying.
That's 12 million adolescents!
And if we step back and look at it from a global perspective,
we're talking about 1.8 billion teens out there today
with a growing risk of being cyberbullied,
because we're in the middle of a social media revolution.
Everyone's getting on social media, and if everyone's getting on social media,
that means the risk of being cyberbullied continues to climb.
What is cyberbullying?
It's an insidious and electronic form of verbal abuse,
and just like real-life bullying,
the effects can include depression, low self-esteem, dropping out of school,
substance abuse, increased suicidal tendencies.
In fact, new research from the United Kingdom shows
that the scars of cyberbullying last well into a person's 50s and 60s.
And so, as I started to do more and more research about this topic,
I was really wondering, "Why is it that adolescents cyberbully?"
Why is it that we're so willing
to post these mean and hurtful messages on social media?
What is driving this?
I also wondered if adults may be participating.
So, I ended up conducting a study for my school science fair project,
and it's true: adults can be a part of the problem when it comes to cyberbullying,
but adolescents are almost 40% more likely
to post an offensive message on social media than an adult.
And that really surprised me!
I wanted to find out why that was, what the reason was for that huge gap.
And since a young age,
I've been really fascinated by the brain,
I've been really fascinated by the way we think,
and I was overwhelmed with this curiosity to understand
how the adolescent brain ties in to behavior.
And so, one day, I was just doing some research,
looking at some articles online,
and I came across a very interesting light in one of my articles:
the adolescent brain is likened to a car with no brakes.
[Does that] sound familiar, parents?
(Laughter)
We don't think about what we're doing.
And there's a very interesting piece of brain science behind this,
and it has to do with the way the brain develops.
It develops from the back to the front,
and what's even more interesting is 90% of our brain is done by the time we're 13,
all finished, ready to go.
There's still 10% left and it's just the frontal lobe of this brain,
called the prefrontal cortex,
but this 10% itself will take another 13 years to develop!
It's got to be pretty important.
So, I did a little bit more research, and guess what?
The prefrontal cortex controls decision making and impulse skills.
So yes, adults. Rejoice. I'll admit it.
Scientifically speaking, you guys can make better decisions than we can.
(Laughter)
So, if we are downing 15 Red Bulls, skipping an English final,
not doing homework, please remember,
odds are we're not thinking through the consequences of our action.
Our brain simply isn't equipped to consider what might possibly happen.
We just make spur-of-the-moment, impulsive, rash decisions,
and that can have harmful effects.
And so, I was venting about this with my friend.
I was talking to her about what a huge problem it was, cyberbullying, the brain,
and she just kind of gave me a look, and I was like, "What?"
She said, "You know, Trisha, this is a big issue,
but it's not like you're the first person ever to discover cyberbullying.
There are other solutions out there that are trying to combat this issue."
And I figured, "Hey! She may be right!"
And it's true: social media sites are trying to help curb this issue,
just not enough, because their solutions tend to be generally ineffective.
Social media sites like to pursue a solution to cyberbullying
that I like to call "stop, block and tell":
stop what you're doing, block the cyberbully,
go tell a parent or a guardian, or law enforcement.
It sounds like a pretty reasonable plan.
The problem is over 90% of adolescents don't tell anyone
that they're being cyberbullied,
and it seems a little backwards
that we're putting the burden to stop the cyberbullying on the victim,
instead of attacking the issue at the source, with the cyberbully.
And so, in this day and age,
with the amount of technology we have available,
I was just stunned that there wasn't a better solution to combat this issue,
this silent pandemic that was affecting millions.
So, that's when I started to experiment.
I wondered, "What if I gave adolescents a second chance
to rethink what they were about to do?
'Whoa! Pause! Stop!
You're about to post something really offensive on social media.
This can hurt someone. Are you sure you want to do this?'"
It was a very simple idea.
I had absolutely no idea if it was going to work,
but I knew I had to find out,
and that's when I had the best idea ever:
I was going to create a social media site that was going to go viral in a few days.
We would put Facebook out of business.
And, you know, I would just have people join the site
and I would test the rethink concept.
I had plenty of data. It was going to be great.
I'd already crowned myself a budding Albert Einstein,
until I rethought my idea
and figured that it probably wasn't that practical.
Even if, miraculously, it did end up working,
I wouldn't have any actual scientifically reliable data.
So, I went back to the drawing board.
I created two software systems,
one called Baseline and other called ReThink.
In the Baseline system,
we presented adolescents ages 12 to 18 a series of offensive messages,
let's just say, "You are so ugly,"
and we said, "Would you post this on social media?"
Of course they had no idea, coming into this experiment,
what it was about, what we were trying to test.
We just wanted to see their willingness to post an offensive message.
We captured the data, we moved on to the next message.
We did the same thing with another software system called ReThink.
The difference was if an adolescent came to that message, "You are so ugly,"
and said, "Sure! I'll post this on social media,"
we went, "Stop! Hold on. Rethink.
Are you sure this is worthy of view?
Are you sure you want to post this on social media?"
So, I conducted this experiment over the course of a few months,
right here, at the Naperville Public Library.
I would try and recruit adolescents as they were coming out of high school,
leaving the library to go home,
for a few minutes, just to be part of this experiment,
and in the end, after months of hard work,
I ended up getting 1,500 trials worth of data.
(Applause)
And the results were stunning.
Over 93% of the time,
an adolescent received a ReThink alert.
They changed their mind
and decided not to post an offensive message on social media;
93% of the time.
(Applause)
ReThink was the most proactive solution to stop cyberbullying before it happened,
and it had such a huge success rate.
The overall willingness to post an offensive message
dropped from 71% to 4%,
and I was stunned because my research proved
that ReThink before you type, ReThink before you post,
ReThink before the damage is done
is the most effective way to stop cyberbullying,
and it does it at the source, with the cyberbully,
before the damage is done.
Since then, I've been blessed to travel the world,
and I've received a patent for my ReThink concept.
I've been, you know, honored to receive many international awards,
and I traveled to several platforms, including the White House,
and presented my work on ReThink.
(Applause)
But none of these awards and accolades mean anything to me
compared to the growing need to get ReThink out
in the hands of every adolescent in the US and across the globe.
So, it was an unforgettable moment when, a few months ago,
we finally released ReThink as an app
on the Android Google Play Store and the Apple App Store for free,
and it was available for millions of people to download
to help stop cyberbullying.
(Applause)
The overwhelming support from parents, teachers and guidance counselors
has been humbling, and I've been honored.
To think that millions of kids around the globe
now have access to this software is amazing.
We've already had thousands of downloads
and we're getting ready to release the app in multiple languages very soon,
but ReThink is more than just a software solution.
It's more than just an app.
I's a movement, it's a mindset, it's a call to action.
Several schools around the globe have now adopted ReThink
as their campaign to stop cyberbullying,
and my goal is to have every school adopt ReThink as their campaign
and get the software out to every child's mobile device and computer,
because it's important that kids know
that everything that they post on social media matters,
it has meaning.
So that's why I encourage parents, teachers, administrators
that are in the room today and out there:
please consider nominating two students
to be part of our ReThink Ambassador Program.
These ambassadors will be trained to influence their peers
and help spread positivity in their school environment,
because that's what I believe in.
That's what I believe the future is, an environment of positivity,
using technology to combat issues that technology has created.
So, what I'd like you all to think about now
is what a post means;
when you're posting something, how much it really matters.
When I decide not to post an offensive message
about the fat girl sitting in front of me in class,
that can mean that girl's life.
When you decide not to post an offensive message about your annoying boss,
that can mean your job.
But the fact is social media has given each and every one of us
an incredible amount of power, and with that power comes responsibility.
We have to remember that, when we're online,
we are digital citizens.
We cannot abuse that power.
We need to make socially responsible decisions,
when we're online, when we're posting stuff on social media.
A few days ago, I received a message from a young girl,
not much younger than myself.
And she said, you know:
"My friend is in the hospital
because she has been cutting herself for the past few months,
because she's been cyberbullied.
And I don't know what to do, I don't know how to deal with this,
and I feel like there's nobody out there that cares.
And then, I found out about ReThink and found out about you,
and I felt like there's someone out there
that understands what people are going through,
that understands that there are kids that silently suffer every day,
because they come home, they turn on their computer,
and they see a boatload of offensive messages
all directed towards them."
I hear stories like that every single day,
from parents who have children that are suffering,
from law enforcement who are dealing with these issues,
and their stories move me to tears every time,
because the pain is real, the loss of life is real,
the issue is real.
That's why we need to take a step back.
Right before we hit "send", we need to rethink.
We need to take a moment, think about our actions,
think about the decision that we're about to make,
what those words really mean,
if they are worthy of who we are and who we want to be.
So, please, choose to rethink.
Thank you.
(Applause)