Keeping a town running means making decisions that are bound to upset someone. And in Billerica, Town Manager John Curran gets it: criticism comes with the job.

“People don’t agree with you and you hear about it,” explained Curran.

But, increasingly, he said he’s been targeted not for what he does, but for how he looks. The most recent insult was posted on a town-run Facebook page dedicated to fixing potholes.

“They referred to me as a d--khead with half a face,” said Curran.

The vulgarity is one thing. The reference to his face is another. Curran was born with a rare condition called hemifacial microsomia that prevented the right side of his face from fully developing.

“It was crossing a line to refer to me as someone with half a face,” he said. “That’s a very personal assault on me.”

Curran said he got into politics — he’s also served as the town administrator in Maynard and as a two-term mayor in Woburn — in part to shift the focus from his appearance to his public persona. He doesn’t like to dwell on what, as he put it, makes him different. But that Facebook post was just the latest in a series of online insults he’s endured over the past couple of years.

So, he decided to go public, penning an op-ed piece in the Lowell Sun earlier this month called " I Look Different. That Makes Me A Target." The piece quickly became the newspaper’s most widely read story of the year.

Curran wanted people to consider the real-life impact of online attacks, not just on adults, but also kids.

“What happens to the kid — girl or boy — sees something online about them being different and it’s a personal assault and they don’t have the coping mechanisms that I have as a 53-year-old adult,” he said. “To them, it’s the end of the world,”

He worries that for kids with disabilities, social media can become a kind of torture. And there’s evidence he’s right.

“Absolutely, that’s exactly what the data showed,” said Shai Fuxman, a researcher at the Waltham-based Education Development Center.

Fuxman was part of a research team that surveyed more than 20,000 MetroWest high school students. They found kids with disabilities were twice as likely as other kids to experience cyber-bullying.

“We know, in general, that students who report cyberbullying are more likely to report depressive symptoms and also to report suicidality,” said Fuxman. “That means having suicidal thoughts and perhaps even suicidal attempts.”

He’d like to see schools create curricula to reduce cyberbullying, but said simply banning social media is not the answer. After all, it can be an important tool for kids, particularly kids with disabilities, to connect.

Curran also sees the benefits of social media. It helped move his op-ed to an audience that extends far beyond Billerica. People from across the country have reached out to him to let him know how much his story resonated.

Now he hopes it will make people — adults and kids — think before they post.