Anonymous message board app spreads gossip in high schools across the country.

Ding. The light on your phone glows. Your screen reads, “An anonymous boy picked you on After School.” Out of utter confusion you click on the link below. Who picked you? Why did they pick you? What did they pick you for? What is After School?

These questions prompt you to download the app. A tiger wearing orange shades appears on your home screen. After opening the seemingly harmless app, you confirm your school: New Community Jewish High School.

Weirded out and a little nervous of what is to come, you press verify, and immediately become immersed in a world of secrecy, gossip, and hate.

After School is an anonymous message board that is individualized for different schools. It allows you to post anonymous comments about people in your school. It is a space that encourages people to express their true feelings for each other without any recognition of the person behind the screen.

In other words, it is cyber bullying waiting to happen.

It’s almost as though hiding behind a tiny screen and signing the word “anonymous” gives people the audacity to say things they wouldn’t say in person.

Although this app can be used solely to send positive, confidence boosting messages to one another, this is not the reality.

The feed of brightly colored posts gives the illusion that this app is anything but harmful. However, if you look behind the bright colors, you will see really hurtful and crude words in regards to your own peers.

The sad thing about this is that it is you, the de Toledo student body, who is writing these hurtful things about your own peers. Yes, a lot of the posts are being generated by the app itself. However, many of the posts are too personal to have been written by a technological gadget.

The confessions on this app are not just hurtful – they are highly inappropriate and disrespectful. They are disrespectful not only to the person about whom it is written, but to anyone who reads it.

Throughout the halls, people say that they post things on the app as jokes. However, these jokes are not funny. They go against everything that de Toledo stands for.

Although the posts are signed “anonymous,” your name is still linked to our school, a school that upholds an image of AP kindness. And students are expected to uphold that image.

Dr. Powell built this school on the idea that de Toledo is an anti-bullying, loving community with no lashon harah.

It is inevitable that there will always be some sort of bullying in any school. It is misguided to think otherwise. However, here at de Toledo, this idea of kindness – that we are a kehilah, a family – has been, and continues to be, embedded in our minds.

By posting anonymous confessions about your own friends, teachers, and de Toledo as a whole, you are violating these morals. Don’t succumb to the pressures of society, and of the technological world. Be your own person, and don’t rely on social media in order to get your thoughts across to your peers.

If you think someone is sweet, go talk to them, in person. If you have a crush on someone, go tell them, in person. If you have an issue with someone, talk it through with them, in person.

Hiding behind a screen is cowardly. It does not create confident, independent members of society. Instead, it fosters insecurities and cyberbullying.

The minute we hide behind a screen, we de-emotionalize ourselves. By doing this, it becomes easier for us to make jokes at the expense of someone else.

It is as if technology is destroying our moral compass.

Right now if you look on the app, you will see posts that question who has the best ass, or who the “hottest girls” are in each grade. These posts are both degrading and offensive.

They raise the question, “why?”

Why does this app exist, and what is its purpose? Why is this app suddenly so popular? Why do people feel the need to comment on someone’s physical features through an app, or even at all?

Why hurt someone’s feelings, or make them feel uncomfortable? Don’t you have better things to be doing with your time?

We are in high school. College is around the corner. Shouldn’t you be focusing on school, sports, work, and family and friends instead of camping out on your phone and writing hurtful comments to people anonymously?

It’s time to grow up.