Opening up the CNN homepage today, I was shocked at what I saw. A headline plastered across the page read “Teen Killed after Facebook Fight.”

Being a young adult in this modern society, I have witnessed many a Facebook fight. From time to time, fights centered on gossip and boy drama fill 60-comment-long threads on statuses.

However, one of these fights was taken too far when a 14-year-old was killed after agreeing to meet the girl she was arguing with at a park. Upon arrival she was shot by a man who is accused of being the other girl’s boyfriend.

Just last April, Chicago dealt with the tragic death of two teenagers and evidence concluded that the violence started because of a fight on Facebook. These occurrences are happening more frequently than many think.

Conflict is a major part of our lives, but is something that should be handled outside the walls of the social media empire. Conflict online is extremely impersonal and makes it almost impossible to see expressions and emotions.

People need to stop hiding behind their screens and embrace the power of a face-to-face conversation. Speaking to someone in person can not only save your feelings but it can prevent future fights by communicating what is truly bothering you.

In the past few years, social media has taken off and new outlets are being launched yearly.

In November 2013, Yik Yak, an anonymous Twitter-esque application, was created, allowing users to anonymously post short blurbs on a feed. Oftentimes, these posts are about events and people on campus. Yik Yak has proven to be a serious problem on many campuses and many believe it perpetuates cyberbullying.

The University of Illinois, like any institution, strives to portray the best image of ourselves to the country and, most importantly, to prospective students. If those students coming in saw our Yik Yak page, I wonder what they would really think of our university.

By logging onto an app like Yik Yak, users are able to hide behind their digital words and say things that they might not say if they were facing a person that second. This is the overarching problem with all social media.

Social media was not created to facilitate fights, but it is intended as a way to connect friends and allow people to keep in touch even when they are far away.

Facebook’s mission statement says, “People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world and to share and express what matters to them.” While, arguably, many of these Facebook fights start because people are expressing beliefs that matter to them, there is no reason for these fights to get hostile.

Nowhere in this mission statement does it mention that Facebook should be used to host fights between friends.

Social media needs to stop being a dumping ground for people to get out their frustrations. If people were more dedicated to making Facebook and other social media sites peaceful places, we would not be seeing fights on these platforms taken to extreme levels.

People of all ages need to pay better attention to what they put on social media, how it affects their reputation, the reputation of those organizations they represent and how their words could affect or hurt people who might see the comments.

Conflict is important in all of our lives. It helps us with problem solving and tells us the true context of some relationships, and while some, including myself, do not necessarily like it, it is necessary to have healthy relationships. People fight, but we do not need to make these fights public and skip the step of talking to the person one-on-one.

While we have all been guilty of misusing social media in one way or another, now is the time to stop that trend and start practicing healthy conflict-resolution strategies. We should start by talking through the issues we have with one another in person and vowing to stop the public fights on social media.

A Facebook fight ended a young and healthy life. Clearly, now is the time to shut down the computer and start having discussions.

Stick to using Facebook and other social media sites to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world and to share and express what matters to you.

Rebecca is a senior in LAS.

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