A 13 year old created a web tool against harassment – Le Soir

F acebook, Ask.fm, Twitter, social networks that have invaded our lives have not always been for the better and many cases of cyber-harassment on teenagers can attest. Suicide Canadian Amanda todd or the history of Camille Touchard are good examples, unfortunately there are many more.

Given the expansion of the phenomenon, the fight against cyber harassment resumed this year as one of the subjects for the Global Science Fair organized by Google. This international competition encourages young people aged 13 to 18 to create scientific or technical projects and submit them online. If the project is approved by the jury, the candidate receives a grant of € 37,000 along with a trip. This year among the five finalists, Trisha Prabhu is a 13 year old girl that caught everyone’s attention. This American from Illinois has created a new system based on the Huffington Post: ReThink (think there twice)

A simple but effective

The interface concept sets. by Trisha is an interface that asks adolescents to read a potentially hateful message before sending it. In addition, the platform provides the author the disastrous consequences that could have put online for his remarks. This invention was tested on 533 college students between 12 and 18 years according to figures from the survey, nearly 93% of teenagers have finally changed their minds and did not publish the offensive message. By comparison, 67% of the panel was willing to post their messages after using only one interface proofreading.

Trisha Prabhu explained on the contest website, the goal of this project ” My assumption is that if the young person (s) have a warning system that would suggest they think twice (“to rethink”) to their decision to write a nasty post / offensive on social networks, the number of hurtful nasty messages / posted is down. If this hypothesis is confirmed, I will create a prototype that will work on all social networks. It will be an application, ReThink, which will not only result in reducing harassment online, but also to have a positive effect on the decision-making process teenager (s), Internet and real life “. It also adds on its website “ I can not wait to be back in a future where we will have mastered the cyber harassment .”

Advanced nice to fight against the scourge afflicting more teens.