Do you know if your children are on Ask.fm?

(Fornebu, 22 June) Ask.fm has been called the bullying app and has become notorious following cases in which young people have been encouraged to commit suicide. Now a survey from Telenor shows that 7 out of 10 parents have never even heard of the app.

The survey was conducted by Norstat on behalf of Telenor and shows that parents have good control of their children's use of websites where they themselves are active and present, such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, but many parents lack oversight and knowledge when it comes to the social media site Ask.fm.

'Ask.fm has 150 million monthly users around the globe, and we know from schools that many Norwegian children also use it. The special thing about the site is that users can send anonymous questions to each other, which can turn the site into a platform for cyber bullying and harassment. We believe this is a website that parents ought to know about,' says Ana Brodtkorb, Head of Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability in Telenor Norway.

Serious bullying
Ask.fm requires users to be 13 years old in order to create a profile. All content posted on the site is public and can be seen by anyone, including people who do not have a profile.

'Like other social media, there are positive sides to Ask.fm, but because everything is publicly available, you can remain anonymous and users are, to some extent, very young, this is a website that parents should know more about than they do at the moment,' says Ana Brodtkorb.

Abroad, there have been several reports of young people who have chosen to kill themselves after being bullied on the website. In Norway, Ask.fm has caused concern in certain municipalities. The municipality in Trondheim is one of several to have deemed it necessary to block access to the website from school networks because children have been subjected to serious harassment and bullying.

'We found that Ask.fm caused anxiety and bullying - sometimes very serious bullying - where the bully was able to operate completely anonymously. We have a zero tolerance approach to bullying. This is why we chose to block the website, after a suggestion from The Youth City Council, since it was being used for activity that we do not want to see in our schools,' says May-Iren Skamfer Evenmo from the municipality of Trondheim's Oppvekstkontoret [the Office of Childhood].

Talk to your kids
In Telenor's survey, 79 per cent of parents responded that it can be a challenge to keep up-to-date with what is going on in the digital age. At the same time, almost half of parents state that they talk to their kids on a weekly basis or more about the challenges posed by the digital age.

'Development of new social media is rapid and it can be a challenge to keep up with it all. We can see that many are good at often talking to their kids about this, which is great! This provides a better understanding of how children use the Internet, while also building trust, so that there's a greater chance that kids will tell you if something undesirable happens,' says Ana Brodtkorb.

Telenor, the Norwegian Red Cross, Kids and Media and the Norwegian Media Authority want to be active driving forces in the fight against cyber bullying, and have therefore created the Use Your Head programme, which includes a schools tour that focuses on netiquette and how both young people and adults can fight cyber bullying. If you need specific tips and advice to tackle cyber bullying, you can visit BrukHue.com to read more.

Facts:
- Ask.fm is a social media website where users ask each other questions anonymously.
- The site was launched in Latvia in 2010, but has since grown into a major international website.
- In February 2015, it had 150 million users in 49 countries.
- In a survey conducted by Norstat on behalf of Telenor, 7 out of 10 Norwegian parents responded that they were not aware of Ask.fm.
- In the autumn of 2014, Ask.fm was bought by IAC, which also owns the Tinder app. The new owners have stated that they want to put an end to the bullying that has taken place on the site, and have launched new ways to block and report users.

For further information, please contact:
Maria Ekornes Myhre, PR Manager, Telenor Norway.
Phone: +47 994 12 707, e-mail: maria-ekornes.myhre@telenor.com