Medical Lake parents alerted to bullying on Burnbook app

A phone app that high school students have been using to post nude pictures and bully classmates prompted Medical Lake School District officials to alert parents and call police.

The app is called Burnbook, and it allows students to post anonymously.

It is named after a book of rumors from the movie “Mean Girls.”

Spokane County Sheriff’s Office detectives learned about the app last week when a mother complained that her son’s phone had pictures of nude teens.

The district sent a letter home to parents of Medical Lake High School students on Monday describing the app and encouraging them to remove it from their children’s smartphones.

“We are not sure about the intended purpose of this application, according to its creators it is for positive input,” wrote John McSmith, principal of Medical Lake High School. “Unfortunately, it has primarily been used as a forum for people to post slanderous and inappropriate content with anonymity, making it impossible to identify the students or people that are posting inappropriate material.”

Burnbook, an app created in 2012, has made national headlines in recent weeks, some calling it a breeding ground for cyberbullying. Last week, a user posted a threat about bringing a gun to a San Diego school.

Names are not associated with any posts. The creators track users’ IP addresses, but that information is not revealed unless a law is broken, according to the app’s policy. Illegal posts, such as child pornography or death threats, are removed as they are discovered.

Authorities first responded to Medical Lake last week after a high school student showed his mother the app because there were naked pictures and postings that suggested people harm themselves. The investigation brought deputies to the school Monday to speak with administrators.

Most of the pictures and comments have been removed. Medical Lake School District Superintendent Tim Ames said he spoke to Burnbook representatives, who assured them that inappropriate posts would be removed.

“There’s only vanilla on the app now compared to what was on there before,” Ames said. “We think the conversations we are having are already having an impact.”

The district sent a letter to parents because officials wanted to make sure they knew about Burnbook.

High school students also spoke up about the app.

“People were joking around on it at first,” Medical Lake junior Cory Wagner said. “Then it started to get too cruel, and I knew it needed to end.”

Wagner told his friends to delete the app from their phone so “they weren’t a part of it.”

He added, “Many of the kids took down posts they’d put up. I’ve never seen an app like that before. I think an app like that could cause people to harm themselves if people are attacking them online.”

Detectives are unsure if any criminal charges will come from their investigation into Medical Lake students using Burnbook. Ames said police involvement seems to have already been enough to deter students.

Google spokesperson Jamie Hill, who has been teaching middle students in the Online Safety Roadshow, said in addition to talking about safe Internet watching, secure email and avoiding scams, she also touches on cyberbullying.

“We tell students to think about what they share before they share it,” said Hill, who was in Spokane on Tuesday to make a presentation at Sacajawea Middle School. “We ask them to think about how it would make them feel.”

She added, “We do talk to them about being an upstander, not a bystander.”