Cyberbullying App: School District Urges Students To Anonymously Report Harassment

A South Carolina school district is stepping up its anti-bullying efforts online with a program called QuickTip, which allows concerned users to anonymously submit specific incidents of cyberbullying and other online student harassment.

The Florence County School District in Lake City, S.C., is encouraging community members to report cyberbullying on the QuickTip app and website, which allows students to submit tips, videos and screenshots of online harassment directly to school administrators. School officials said the program is intended to be a proactive step to remove malicious behavior and teasing while encouraging a healthy atmosphere for learning.

“Having this anonymous way for someone to report bullying, harassment or just unsafe behavior in any form allows us to be very proactive and gives kids a voice and lets us know what’s going on,” said Kasey Feagin, Senior Director of Curriculum Instruction and Assessment for Florence County School District Three, in an interview with local NBC affiliate WMBF-TV.

The SchoolMessenger Quick Tip app enables students, parents or others to anonymously alert district officials to precise incidents of bullying. Users have the option of selecting the exact school in which the bullying is occurring as well as the topic of the harassment, ranging from alcohol to body image shaming to student/teacher relationships.

The Quick Tip app also features a file input for users to submit screenshots, videos or links to evidence of the cyberbullying.

Although cyber bullying and harassment have seen pushback from larger social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, anonymous feedback apps such as Sarahah have reinvigorated school initiatives to curb digital bullying. The issue of childhood bullying has taken on a national interest as First Lady Melania Trump has spearheaded social media campaigns such as the #StopChildhoodBullying awareness drive.

So-called “honesty apps” like Sarahah allow users to give anonymous feedback to their friends, coworkers – and potential enemies. The app currently has more than 10 million downloads from the Google Play store and is the 63^rd-most downloaded app on iTunes.

Websites and apps similar to QuickTip have recently been implemented by several children’s safety organizations and school districts. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children uses a CyberTipline for people to anonymously submit reports ranging from child pornography to incidents of child abuse. The information passed to law enforcement anonymously allows users to indicate if the alleged abuse is taking place via email, text message, on a website or even online gaming forums.

"We're seeing some severe cyberbullying and harassment, constant messages of hurtful and mean things," said Stephen Sauer, the director of Cybertip.ca, in an interview with The Morning Edition. "It allows individuals to basically post whatever they want to your account without having any accountability at all.”

School administrators say they hope the QuickTip program will open up students to reporting incidents of cyberbullying without fear of retribution. However, officials did not address the potential for fake submissions to be used to abuse the platform.

“I think it would be...I will provide an opportunity for people to really voice their opinions and concerns about what’s going on and to give us a front leg ahead of the problem, so that we can go in and solve the problem,” Mary Howard, Principal at Lake City Early Learning Center, told WMBF.