My colleagues and I have been discussing the phenomenon of sexting in great detail recently, in light of the actions of two Texas school districts. Before the beginning of this new school year, the Houston Independent school district (one of the largest in the nation) and the Dallas-Fort Worth school district banned sending sexually-explicit photos…
A colleague sent along this article detailing how some public schools are issuing PDAs to third, fourth, and fifth graders in an effort to render them comfortable with the technology, and as another medium through which they can learn. For example, they can use it to draw pictures, write essays, study flash cards, and take…
Justin and I have both blogged about the case where an assistant principal in Virginia was charged with possession of child pornography after trying to investigate a sexting case through the collection of evidence where a student emailed the evidence (a sexually-explicit picture of a minor) to his office computer. The charges were eventually dropped,…
You’ve probably heard about the proposed law in New Jersey that would require social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook to police their users. This is so frustrating for me to hear, as well-intentioned but oft-misguided legislators propose solutions to overblown online fears. Social networking sites are not responsible for actively surveilling and censoring the…
Recently, we’ve received calls and inquiries about “sexting” and the Jesse Logan case, and so I thought we’d discuss the matter here. For those looking for an official definition, we characterize “sexting” as “the sending or receiving of sexually-suggestive or explicit text or pictures via one’s cell phone.” Anecdotally, it seems that the phenomenon is…
One of my colleagues, Forrest Collier, over at InternetSafety.com, has just released a sweet new app for the iPhone and iPod Touch that helps parents protect their children from objectionable and problematic content on their mobile device. The program is called “Safe Eyes Mobile” and works just like the built-in iPhone browser with pinch and…