I want you to imagine yourself as a student attending your first day at a modern high school.

Upon entering the school, you are astonished to see groups of students smiling and enjoying the school day. The crisp white walls are lined with posters, promoting acceptance of the LGBTQ community, anti-bullying, motivational quotes and religious clubs. As you walk further into the school, you notice that the student population is widely diverse, which seems very promising to you. Eventually, you wander into the library, and it is technologically advanced and full of students socializing. You leave the school feeling proud that the students appear to be getting the best public education possible.

Little do you know, the students walking past those poster-plastered walls would tell you another story.

Behind closed doors, this school is home to relentless cyberbullies, vicious manipulation and a staggering mean girl parallelism. Millennial teenagers are faced with several new challenges due to the introduction of smartphones into their daily lives. In fact, as of 2015, 73 percent of teens have access to a smartphone. Smartphones provide cyber bullies a screen to hide behind which makes it much easier for them to be inconsiderate and inhumane towards their victim.

Cyber bullies have taken on the attributes of mean girls in the sense that they utilize mind games to lower their victims' self-worth. However, these cyber mean girls commonly refrain from physical violence in order to prevent them from being punished. Although I am referring to these bullies as cyber mean girls, they are not only female but male as well. Both male and female cyber mean girls rely on mob mentality to maximize control over their victim, and because of this, they prefer using group messages. I have found that most cyber mean girls have a reputation to uphold, so they will use alternate applications to prevent their parents from reading their offensive text messages.

About a year ago, I was a victim of a cyber mean girl and for a short amount of time, it turned me into one.

The atmosphere created by a group message often provokes mob mentality because the members of the group share a common goal: to avoid becoming victims themselves. This is what drove me to temporarily become a cyber mean girl, and I still regret it to this day. Having been a victim of cyber mean girls myself, I understand the fear that leaving the message will provoke them even more, and sometimes, it does.

To those who are on the receiving end of cyberbullying, here's some advice:

1. Before you leave the group, I suggest screenshotting some of the more hurtful messages in case you need to bring them to your parents.

2. If you know a few members of the group, I found that talking to them in person can make them feel guilty, but most of the time, they will deny it. If you start to see someone you know becoming a cyber mean girl, it may be best for you to give them a little space.

3. Most importantly, when added to a group chat of cyber mean girls, remember your morals and avoid turning into one of them because you may be their next victim.

I want you to think back to the modern high school that I described previously, but this time, imagine yourself as the victim of a cyberbullies.

You feel nervous about entering the school because, on your way there, you decided to leave a hateful group message. As you enter the building, you see members of that very message giggling about something on one of their phones. You hastily decide that they are talking about you in that group message, and you become very anxious. As you walk down the hallway, you feel like you are being talked about and stared at by every student. You try to stop it from getting to you but eventually, it does, and you rejoin the message. In the message, you find that they have in fact been attacking you although you left the group. This makes you feel alone and insecure.

You decide to go to the school counselor and show them the group message. You get halfway there and realize that some of those messages, specifically the ones where you were attempting to stand up for yourself, may be incriminating. You know that you are the victim so you screenshot the messages they don't make you out to be responsible. You take the screenshots to the counselor, and he tells you that the school cannot be involved and that it is up to the members of the group to work it out.

No punishment is given, although you provided incriminating evidence.

The threat of cyber mean girls is present in all schools, whether or not it appears to be all around perfect, like the school I described. It is important for students to recognize the impact their actions have on others. Schools should make students aware that cyber bullying is punishable, and parents should teach their children to avoid becoming a cyber mean girl.