Some adults are blaming a new generation of apps for contributing to bullying, and even teen suicide.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd is one of those people.

Sheriff Judd says one of these apps made a local teen take her own life to escape the bullying of former friends.

Tricia Norman thought she was being a conscientious mom, keeping tabs on her daughter's social media accounts.

But like many parents, she found monitoring online communications was getting more and more difficult with trends constantly changing.

The recent trend -- referred to as disappearing apps -- are meant for messages to expire, or disappear shortly after they are received. And that worries parents more than anything else.

The apps have raised issues regarding sexting or inappropriate posts.

Rebecca Sedwick had just started the sixth-grade, she was just 12 years old and a good student, but school was a challenge.

Her mother says she was bullied relentlessly.

Her mom closed her Facebook account, and pulled her out of school -- but didn't know about her cell phone messaging apps.

The last time Tricia Norman saw her daughter, Rebecca was using her cell phone. 

"To me she is still and always be part of this family so I try to include her in everything," says Tricia.

Later that night, Rebecca took her own life.

"When you stand at the base of a cement silo and see a 12-year-old child crumpled on the ground because she jumped to her death, it changes your life forever ... and when you find out bullying was behind it, that frustrates you," said Sheriff Judd.

Through the Polk County Sheriff's Office investigation, Sheriff Judd found out that disappearing apps may have contributed to Rebecca's anguish.

One of those apps is Ask.FM, which was started in the tiny former Soviet Republic of Latvia.

Ask.FM's website boasts more than 100 million users worldwide.

Some of those users were Rebecca's bullies.

Tricia says that when news of Rebecca's death went viral, the company deleted Rebecca's page, making it impossible for law enforcement to see what was said the night she died.

"They deleted everything, her whole entire page," said Tricia.

To this day, Tricia has no idea what was said to her daughter on the day she took her own life.

In just over a year, there have been more than a dozen news reports around the world linking suicides to bullying on Ask.FM, all of them teens.

"They're saying we don't care if you're victimized, we don't care if your child is victimized," said Tricia.

The company says they cooperate with law enforcement, and recently added a "safety" page to its website saying "bullies are not tolerated."

In a statement to CNN the site said the following:

"Reports of suicide cases often tend to present premature and simplified conclusions about tragic events, which are always a complex overlap of different factors."

Suicide is complicated, and that includes the circumstances of Rebecca's death. And without the original records from Ask.FM, no one can say exactly why she took her own life.

But it's not just bullies. Those apps with hard-to-trace messaging draw all kinds of criminal activity.

And there are more disappearing apps emerging every day.

"If it's not stored, it doesn't matter what the judicial process is, you're not going to get it," said Shawn Henry, president of CrowdStrike Services.