By Chase Cowan
There has been a new app rising in popularity in the past months. The app is called “Tea,” it is used to slander students, primarily girls targeting boys. The minimum age to log onto the app is 18 years old, however many younger people have found ways around this. Many schools have no idea how to keep up with this app, and even worse, many admin don’t even know that this app exists. This is because the students keep it a secret from the schools by only keeping it on their phones, which admin don’t have direct access to.
Bud Beach, Dean at Ponte Vedra High School (PVHS), says, “it can get sketchy,” when apps like these come up because the schools aren’t sure on how to regulate them to keep their students safe, while still allowing free speech. He explains how this is a major gray area for administrators because if this kind of activity has happened before, it wasn’t on this platform and in some cases, not even online.
“You can’t be anonymous on things like this.”
Dean Beach
Dean Beach didn’t like the idea of the users remaining unknown, saying that “you can’t be anonymous on things like this.” Cyberbullying is a big problem in America and it’s only growing due to the rise of technology and phones in school.
According to some Facebook users, in the past, there have been things like the Tea app that existed, such as something called a “slam book.” This is a physical book passed around high schools where girls specifically collected information from other girls about guys that they may be looking to date. Although in theory it was used for girls’ safety, it was mostly used to slander boys without them knowing. Kieran Reily, a junior at PVHS recognizes that the Tea app is a “good way to find out stuff,” but at the same time he commends that the idea of the app is a “breach of privacy.” This is because people don’t get consent to be posted on the app.
These kinds of things will most likely never stop, but schools need to keep up trying to stifle this new kind of cyberbullying, which can hurt young men and women’s self-esteem at a very emotional point in their lives.
Graphic by Philip Berkwit
