Am i pretty or ugly?

The teenage trend of asking people to vet their looks on the web can have damaging consequences, writes Sharon Ní Chonchúir

A YOUNG girl in a childish koala hat looks out from your screen. Staring at you with big eyes and shyly pulling her hat down around her ears, she asks you a question: “Am I pretty or ugly?”.

This is the content of a video that was posted on the YouTube website on Dec 17, 2010. It has since been viewed more than four-and-a-half million times and provoked more than 110,000 comments, many of which are shockingly negative.