by Veronica Agard

Middle school is a pretty rough time for most of us. We’re just beginning to experience puberty—the hormones, our menstrual cycles, and maybe our first real crush. To add to that pressure, if you were in middle school within the past ten years or so, a good chunk of the highs and lows of your middle school experience likely played out on social media. But what happens when you are bullied or targeted and there’s no way to track down who’s behind it?

by Felice León

Social media is terribly intrusive and I tend to stay away from the hyperreality that it yields. On Facebook, I only accept friend requests from people that I know (in real life), or from people that I have become acquainted with through friends. Due to this vetting, my experiences on social media have been tolerable. No terribly egregious or inappropriate experiences come to mind. My friends, who also keep a fairly low profile on social media, agree—not too much drama. Though my friends with a greater social capital and larger networks have been harassed, vis-à-vis rude and nasty posts.

The internet often brings out the worst in people. We’ve seen it before: trolls in the comment sections of articles and YouTube videos abusing their anonymity and safe position behind their computer screen. Dealing with those people is easy, but what happens when the online harassers were once your friends?