Hannah Smith suicide: My sickening trawl through the website where children are trolled to death By Barbara Davies Tragic: Hannah Smith hanged herself after being bullied on the ask.fm website To trawl through the internet pages of ask.fm is to take a journey into a dark cyber playground where, at this very moment, children are unleashing the worst kind of mental cruelty upon each other. It takes a while to adjust to the sometimes almost indecipherable teenage slang on this notorious question-and-answer website. But the grammatical laziness, spelling mistakes, badly punctuated sentences and text-speak cannot hide the vitriol being spouted anonymously between schoolchildren - some of them barely into their teens. "You and that "fake" friend of yours need to get a solid grip on lifes (sic) you ugly, fat, friendless b******!!!!!" reads one message that I discovered within minutes of randomly searching the site. The ask.fm user to whom this was sent - a girl whose photo shows a child no older than 13 - responded in terms just as foul. Say that to our faces and we will either leave you without a face or break your spine in half you freak of nature . . . just remember jesus loves you . . . just about the only person that will next to your mother. Nasty stuff, without a doubt, but abusive exchanges such as these are nothing unusual on ask.fm, a bear-pit in which normal social rules do not apply. Older generations could be forgiven for wondering why on earth children are attracted to this deeply disturbing but hugely popular social networking site. While its 65 million users have profiles with names and pictures, just like Facebook or Twitter, ask.fm has no privacy settings and allows individuals to post questions and comments on other people's profile pages anonymously. This they do with a viciousness worthy of Lord Of The Flies. Hannah Smith, the 14-year-old schoolgirl who hanged herself last Friday after being savagely bullied on ask.fm, had found herself on the receiving end of such bile. She had been urged to "drink bleach" and "go get cancer." Her death comes just three months after 15-year-old schoolboy Joshua Unsworth, from Goosnargh, Lancashire, took his own life after similarly vile comments were posted by ask.fm bullies. "Your [sic] just like a dog," was one of the comments directed at him. Hannah, from Market Harborough, Leicestershire, was found dead in her parents' home after being sent abusive messages on website Ask.fm No one likes you and you should go back to slitting yourself. Honestly no one cares for you even your parents don't want you, there [sic] gunna put you in care. When it was launched in June 2010, ask.fm's ostensible purpose was to enable people - largely youngsters - to ask each other innocuous questions about their lives, their favourite foods, pop groups and actors. Indeed, much of the banter that goes on there is utterly harmless - even mindless. "What meal was so good that you can't forget it?"; "Do you prefer tea, coffee or cocoa?" read some of the questions currently on the site. But it's not for this kind of innocent banter, of course, that ask.fm has become so hugely popular. For the site encourages users to provoke each other, sparking fierce online wars. "You're [sic] eyebrow piercing makes you look gay," one 16-year-old boy from Nottingham is told. He reacts immediately: "I really couldn't care less. I know I'm not gay, so get it out of your head . . . Unsupervised by adults and unconstrained by fears about being identified, it is hardly surprising the tone of the exchanges between schoolchildren can flip from innocuous to disturbing in a matter of moments. Hannah Smith's dad David Smith and sister Jo. Mr Smith said he could not understand how anonymous users of Ask.fm were allowed to target a teenage girl On a page belonging to a 13-year-old girl from Barrow in Cumbria, the question: "What song makes you want to dance . . ." sits just above the brutally obscene message: "I would f*** you so hard." Thirteen is the official minimum age to sign up to ask.fm, but there is nothing to stop those even younger lying when registering for an account, which takes just seconds. The site asks only for the child's name, email address and date of birth to register an account. Most sign up via a Facebook page. You ugly, fat, friendless b****** Go get cancer Go back to slitting yourself All the child's "Facebook friends" are then automatically alerted that they have joined ask.fm. Most of the anonymous abuse which is posted comes from people known to the victim - usually from their school. Boys are asked about their virginity, their sexuality and, rather predictably, how well they are endowed, while girls find their appearances brutally rated, as well as experiencing constant abuse about whether they are a "slut" or "frigid." Indeed, while parental fears about the internet have focused on the idea of paedophiles trawling social networking sites looking for young victims, the danger on ask.fm comes nearly always from people the victims know. Tell [your friend] K*** shes like prostitute [sic] . . . Everyone wants to s*** her but nobody wants her . . . she's ugly. The 14-year-old Lancashire schoolgirl this is directed at responds in capitals for added effect: "RIGHT LISTEN HERE YOU PATHETIC B**** . . . Joshua Unsworth, 15, was bullied to death by trolls on the internet So common is this kind of anonymous nastiness, that teenage users can be seen churning out the same coined phrases, demanding that their tormentors - or "haters" in ask.fm parlance - reveal themselves. "Pop up" is the most used one, "come off anon" is another. Both are direct instructions to those asking the questions to stop being anonymous, to show themselves. There are similar pleas to give up anonymity when the comments are positive. "You're so beautiful," reads one posted anonymously on a 12-year-old's website. Clearly delighted, she replies, asking her flatterer to reveal himself to her: "Awwww! That's nice. Mail me. And perhaps here lies the key to understanding why children are so addicted to ask.fm, even when they are receiving so much abuse for it. On a very basic level, as so many of the questions being posted reveal, it is an online popularity competition, with those using it desperately looking for approval from their classmates. In their adolescent world, everything is either black and white, everyone is either for you - or against you. When the most popular boy or girl in the class is asked - by an anonymous poster, of course - to name the five prettiest girls or most attractive boys in the class, everyone is desperately hoping they will be there on the list of "Top Five Hottest Girls" or "Five Coolest Friends." The site encourages teenagers, with their notoriously delicate egos, to fish for compliments. They are invited to post videos and photographs of themselves. Those that do generally take "selfies" - photos taken of themselves holding their smart phones at arms length - in their bedrooms. Girls mostly strike some kind of provocative pouting pose, while unsmiling boys don sunglasses and baseball caps to look cool. More often than not the response given to praise of one's looks is a generic: "Awwww! Thanks! Others use the site to tell those they have a crush on "somebody likes you," or to ask friends what they think of other members of the class, hoping for a positive response. Desperate for acceptance and understanding, an alarming number of youngsters also reveal intensely personal information about themselves. Chatter about self-harming and depression is frighteningly commonplace. Asked about her goals in life, a 14-year-old girl called Mollie, from Barnstaple, North Devon, writes: "To get out of depression and self-harm." Chiefs: L-R: Marks Terebins, Oskars Liepiøö and Iøja Terebins inside the HQ of Ask.fm in Riga , Latvia Another anonymous user asks: "Why would you tell everyone that you self-harm?" and she replies: "Everyone found out from other people that found out . . . I don't tell people. Later she adds: "One day someone might help me stop." If you enter the word "self-harm" in the site's search box it turns up a staggering 2,954 profiles, including users who have given themselves names such as "foreverselfharmer" and "selfharmadvice." Victims of abuse on ask.fm often turn to forums such as YouTube to air their misery. A visit to the video website reveals scores of clips from children filming themselves in their bedrooms speaking into the cameras of their laptops and smartphones, ranting about the "anonymous hate" they have received. "I've had people telling me to kill myself and cut myself and hit a vein," says one teenage boy, who pauses when he hears one of his parents coming up the stairs. When the coast is clear, he continues: "I'm not depressed. I'm really p***** off. Basically, all through my school life I've been bullied. In the wake of Hannah Smith's death last week, dozens of parents in Britain have been asking why teenagers on the receiving end of abuse don't simply close down their ask.fm accounts. But, in effect, this would be like asking a schoolchild who is suffering from taunts from classmates to never enter the playground, to remove themselves from their peer group. Bullying between children is, of course, nothing new, but before the advent of the internet, children were at least safe at home. The emergence of sites such as ask.fm allows bullies to pursue their victims into their bedrooms. Tormented in isolation, feelings of depression and loss of self-worth can quickly spiral out of control. Often, as in the real school playground, they don't tell adults until it all becomes too much to bear, for fear of alienating themselves further from their peer group. In the most tragic cases such as those of Hannah Smith and Joshua Unsworth, they don't tell until it's too late. The site's Russian internet entrepreneur owners and brothers, Ilya and Mark Terebin, have been heavily criticised for failing to protect the millions of teenagers who are making them unimaginably wealthy. 'Your parents don't want you... there gunna put you in care' Drink bleach Tell your friend shes like prostitute... no one wants her Governed by Latvian law, the country in which the site is based, ask.fm's "terms of service" include an extensive disclaimer which explains: "The ask.fm service allows for anonymous content which ask.fm does not monitor. A lot of it is extremely objectionable indeed. And, as tragic as the death of Hannah Smith was, looking at the content of ask.fm it seems unlikely she will be the website's last victim. Most alarming is the terrible loneliness that appears to be at the heart of its success, the desperate desire of its young users to reach out and be accepted by their peers. For the runaway success of ask.fm gives a snapshot image of an entire generation of youth. The first swathe of children to have been raised on the internet have apparently been left with a huge gap in their emotional and social lives. Desperate for online approval, they keep logging on, even when they know that "the haters" are out there somewhere, lying in wait.