We tend to believe that bullying exists predominantly in schools and that bullies are mainly kids picking on other kids. But a recent story shows us that bullying has a new and very ugly face.
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A group of women in the US created a Facebook group to sell gently used baby clothes. However somewhere down the line things took a nasty turn when a thread called 'mean girls' was started.
In this thread these women post pictures of babies and criticize how they look. Whats worse - these heartless women who poke fun at innocent children are mums too!
They apparently steal pictures of little ones from unassuming parents' Facebook profiles and post it on their private group's page without permission. A mum from Florida, Melissa Anetucci said she was 'appalled' by this group and is making it her mission to expose the women behind it.
In her attempt to expose these women, when Melissa posted some of the comments on her Facebook wall, one of the 'mean mums' responded saying “This is Facebook, not the Salem Witch Hunt, this is a free country and I was laughing because it was funny. Thanks for your comments, next.” Then Melissa also reported the group to Facebook.
Ellen Veach, another mum from Arizona was told by a friend that her 2-year-old daughter's picture was going around. The self-proclaimed 'mean girls' group had rudely compared her daughter to a cartoon character. Ellen told Fox News that she had no idea that friends of her friends could see her pictures.
Ellen says "'The things that these mothers said were the most horrific things that I have ever seen, being a mom and knowing that they are moms".
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"I post pictures of my son’s first day in kindergarten or Ivy’s new outfit. I just naively post it up so my friends can see, not realizing there’s a group that takes these pictures and targets these children and makes fun of them. That’s just something I wouldn't even think a mother or grown woman would do,” she said to Fox News.
Ellen has since removed all pictures of her kids from her Facebook page and replaced her profile picture with the words ”Stay Strong and Stop Bullying.”
Following the exposure of the 'mean girls' page, some of the mean mums defended themselves saying they were just exercising 'freedom of speech', while a few others felt remorse for degrading innocent babies, with one saying ''I'm probably going to hell for saying that".
Since they had used their own profiles when posting these rude comments, many of the women have deactivated their Facebook pages. The group has now been removed.
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Staying safe on social media networks
As mums we have a responsibility to protect our kids from such internet bullies. Do keep the following points in mind when posting your kids' pictures on Facebook or other social media networks.
- Check your Facebook settings and make sure 'friends of friends' or in other words 'strangers' cannot get hold of pictures of your precious babies.
- Be very selective when you add friends - if you don't know them, don't add them.
- If you do not want any particular person or people in your 'friends list' to see certain pictures, you can edit certain settings on Facebook to make this possible.
- Be sure to double check the privacy settings of older pictures and albums you might have posted as sometimes, the settings on these may be 'public'.
- If your child is old enough to have a Facebook profile of his/her own, do talk to them about all the points mentioned above.
What do you feel about this story? If you too feel as strongly about this story as we do, please do leave a comment below.
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