Indian Actress, Ananya Panday

Ananya Panday, 20, is an Indian Actress who had remarkable debut in Punit Malhotra’s Student Of The Year 2. She is a daughter of an actor in India, Chunky Pandey, where she was biased by becoming an actress as a daughter of a famous actor. She was recently trolled for lying about her admission to University Of Southern California. A few girls, who claimed to be her classmates, spread rumors that she did not actually get admission in University of Southern California (USC) and was faking it. To put an end to the rumors, Ananya took to her Instagram account to share pictures of her acceptance letter.

She was not only attacked by her rumors about her admissions by her classmates, but also she was accused by called as a loser, a liar, flat-chested, bad actor, and overall an undeserving actor given the opportunity because of her father. Ananya was trolled by her admission to University of Southern California, and in response, she posted a picture of her admission certificates. She was strong and authentic enough to respond to those people who were spreading rumors about her.

She is comfortable using social media and thinks it is important to start talking about cyberbullying make people realize that it is not right to standardize hate. She said, "The problem with today’s world is that hate is normalized". Despite she was attacked through social media, she is taking advantage of social media, because she thinks social media is a great tool for support system and to start the conversation of something, about cyberbullying in her case. She said, "I’ve grown up using social media, so this is a very comfortable environment I’ve been in. It is important to have a strong social setting and a good support system because you feel really alone when bullied, and this is exactly what I want to offer through the initiative; my first goal is to start the conversation".

She specifically mentions that being a cyber victim is not a gender or social specific, but it happens to anyone. Nonetheless, cyberbully exist because people can hide behind the screen, and talk anything they feel by being anonymous. She initiated an online campaign called, “so positive” to confront cyberbullying. She introduces her online campaign what she calls, Digital Social Responsibility (DSR), as a part of growing up is taking responsibility & as a woke Millennial. The campaign intents at spreading awareness about cyberbullying on social media and explores data that can be taken by the victims in order to deal with it. She says, "The reason why I am taking a stand is (because) people should have an understanding of how it affects others and why it is important to be responsible to comment on anything".