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Trisha Prabhu, a 15-year old girl from the US may want to be a neuroscientist when she grows up, but she has already given herself a much harder task: solving cyber bullying. In 2013, Prabhu heard about a young girl committing suicide over the simplest but most hateful of insults, “You’re fat, you’re ugly, and nobody likes you, they say. You’re a loser—why don’t you kill yourself already?” That tragic story inspired Prabhu to set about bringing a change on the internet.

With her project Rethink, she allows teenagers to reread their hurtful messages before sending them out into the world. With her samples, finding and research, Prabhu identified that adolescents might be less willing to bully others if prompted with a reminder alert. Rethink, which saw Prabhu selected as a Global Finalist for the Google Science Fair 2014, screens messages on your phone or computer for offensive words and prompts a warning if it catches them, asking the user if they really want to send out something like that.

After 1,500 anonymous trials with teenagers ranging from ages 12 to 18, she found that less than five percent of participants from the "Rethink" test group decided to post the abusive content. "My design includes a sophisticated context-sensitive filtering system that catches truly 'mean/hurtful' messages," Prabhu writes in her project outline. She hopes schools and parents everywhere will use her software, as a simple means to address a problem that, with the proliferation of cell phones and messaging apps, has only gotten worse.