ReThink Before You Type | Trisha Prabhu | TEDxTeen

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Have you ever done or said something and wished you could take it back? Cyber bullying is a bigger problem than you think. There is a solution. ReThink about it...

Trisha Prabhu is a 14-year-old student at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, Illinois. From a young age, she has been fascinated with the inner workings of the brain. In 2013, Trisha heard about a young girl’s suicide due to bullying on the Internet and set out to find a long-term solution to cyberbullying.

"Girl, kill yourself."

"Why are you still alive?"

"You are so ugly."

Rebecca Sedwick,

an eleven-year-old girl from Florida,

received those mean, hurtful,

tormenting and embarrassing messages
on her social media.

They would ultimately lead her

to jump off of her town's water tower

to her death.

In the fall of 2013,

I would come home from school
to read that story.

I was stunned, shocked,

and I was heart-broken.

How could a girl younger than myself

be pushed to take her own life?

That's when I knew I had to do something

to stop this from ever happening again.

But the pain and the misery
that Rebecca endured

had already happened.

The damage was done.

My name is Trisha Prabhu,

I'm fourteen years old,

and I'm from the great city of Naperville,

in Illionois, in the United States.

I'm passionate to stop cyberbullying

at the source, before the damage is done.

I'm a big dreamer,
and I believe that everyone

should have the right to dream,
persist in their dream,

and see that become a reality.

So, when I read Rebecca's story,

I immediately wondered,

"Were there any others like her out there,

that were suffering as well?"

I'd soon learn that she was one
of a countless many.

Megan Meier died three weeks
before her fourteenth birthday.

She hung herself in her bedroom closet

where her mother would find her

when coming up to get her for dinner.

She'd received messages like,

"The world would be
a better place without you",

on her Myspace account.

The damage was done,

and Megan suffered the consequences.

Tyler Clementi
was an eighteen-year-old student

at Rutgers University.

He was just getting used to college life

and his new gay identity.

One day, his roommate and a friend

decided to use a webcam and a laptop

to stream some of Tyler's most
intimate moments with his boyfriend

all over social media.

The damage was done.

Humiliated, Tyler took his life,

jumping off of the
George Washington bridge.

I wish more than anything

that I could rewrite those stories.

I wish I could make every perpetrator

rethink what they did.

But what if I could do that?

What if I could stop the damage
before it was done?

Would Megan, Tyler and Rebecca
still be alive today?

Cyberbullying is a huge problem.

52% of adolescents
in the United States alone

have been cyberbullied.

And 38% of them

suffered suicidal tendencies.

Let's look at it
from a global perspective.

A quarter of the world's population
are adolescents.

We're talking 1.8 billion teens.

Imagine that
in the social media revolution;

how more and more of them
are getting on social media,

and more and more of them
are being cyberbullied.

So, why do you get cyberbullied?

Look, I might be biased,
but I'm pretty sure

that kids are not mean devils
that run around with cruel intentions.

I don't know about you,
but that's what I think.

And what about adults?
Are they nice or mean on social media?

Now, when it comes to adults,
I wasn't really sure.

So, I had to do some research
to figure that out.

So, that year,
for my science experiment at school,

I decided to look at how age
affected the willingness

to post offensive messages
on social media sites.

What did I find?

This younger age group,
ages twelve to eighteen,

was 40% more willing
to post an offensive message

than an older age group.

OK. The number didn't surprise me.

But why?

Why was that younger age group

so much more willing
to post an offensive message?

I started to do a lot of research,

and, one day, I came across an article,

and it had one sentence
that would forever change

my view on this problem.

They said, "The adolescent brain

is likened to a car with no breaks."

High speed. No pausing.

No thinking. No considering.

We just act. So why is it like that?

Our brains are kind of weird.

They develop from the back to the front,

which means
that our front part of the brain

is not fully developed until age 25.

Why is that a problem?

Well, prefrontal cortex

controls decision-making skills,

rash, impulsive decisions,

spur-of-the-moment feelings.

So, that's why adolescents
don't think before they act.

They just go ahead and do something,

whether it's downing
fifteen Red Bulls on a dare,

skipping an English final,

doing something crazy.

We don't really think before we do it.

Well, then I was
venting about this to a friend.

I was like, "Gosh, you know,
this is horrible."

And she said, "You know, Trisha,
I really admire your passion,

but you've been talking about this
for the last 15 minutes,

as if you had just discovered it.

It's a huge problem,
but social media sites

are already doing stuff to stop this."

And I went, "Oh, yeah. You're right."

But I'd soon find that
what social media sites are doing

is really nothing.

Their mechanism
is a "stop, block, tell" method.

You stop what you're doing,
through the victim,

you block the cyberbully

and you immediately
go tell a parent or guardian.

It sounds pretty reasonable.

But here's what actually happens:

adolescents, we're kind of afraid
to tell people

that we're being cyberbullied.

Research shows that nine out of ten times

victims don't tell anyone
that they're being cyberbullied.

What's more,
why are we putting the burden

on the victim to block the cyberbully?

Why aren't we changing the behavior
in the actual cyberbully?

And it angered me.

There wasn't a single effective way
to stop cyberbullying,

and it was a silent pandemic

that was affecting
so many people around the world.

That's when I had an idea.

I know from my research
that adolescents don't think

before they do things, right?

So, what if they didn't think
before they type?

What if I gave them a chance

to think about what they were doing?

If an adolescent tried to post
an offensive message on social media,

if I went, "Whoa! Hold on.

You're about to post
an offensive message to someone.

That can really hurt them.

Are you sure you want
to post this message?",

would they still be as willing to do it?

I had no idea,
but I was ready to find out.

So that year, using my science
and technology skills,

I created two software systems.

And basically, they were able to compare

whether an alert that prompted adolescents

to think about what they were doing

actually decreased their willingness
to post offensive messages.

So, for four to six weeks,
I basically lived at my local library.

All the kids were always
giving me weird looks,

but, you know, in the end,
it was totally worth it.

I was able to get
1,500 valid trials of data.

And what did I find?

93% of the time when adolescents
receive an alert that says,

"Whoa! You're about
to post an offensive message",

they changed their mind.

I was able to decrease the willingness
to post offensive messages

from 71.4% to 4.6%.

(Cheers) (Applause)

Think about that.

My research proved
that rethink before you type,

rethink before you post,

rethink before the damage is done

is an effective long-term method
to stop cyberbullying,

at the source, before the damage is done.

So Rethink has become
insanely popular -- I'm glad to say.

Just a few weeks ago,
I was at the Google Science Fair

for my research. I'm a global finalist.

And I also currently --

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)

And I also currently hold a United States
provisional patent for this idea.

So now, my main goal

is getting this out there as a product,

and stopping cyberbullying.

I'm currently working tirelessly

to create a Chrome extension browser

and a mobile add-on for mobile platforms.

That way, Rethink can go global

and stop cyberbullying
before the damage is done.

Steve Jobs once said,

"Simple can be harder than complex.

Original, much harder than derived.

But when you get there, it's worth it,

because you can move mountains."

He is so right.

Rethink has proven that,
in those few seconds,

when you decide whether or not
you're going to hit "post",

those few seconds
mean so much in the future.

So, whether you're about to post
an offensive message

about the fat girl that sits
ahead of you in your class,

or your annoying boss,

that can mean the fat girl's life,

or your job.

So, I encourage all of you:

rethink before the damage is done.

Very rarely in this connected world

do we remember, we need to slow down,

pause, think about what we're doing.

We're posting a message

and that has significance.

So, choose to rethink.

Rethink before you type,

before the damage is done.

Thank you.

(Cheers) (Applause)