In our school assemblies, Sameer and I regularly talk with students about using social media safely and responsibly. One part of this discussion focuses on encouraging youth to only connect on private accounts with those they know and trust. In general, if a Facebook user, for example, has their privacy settings configured in a way…
This past summer, I served as a Fulbright Specialist at the Anti-Bullying Centre (ABC) at Dublin City University (DCU) in Dublin, Ireland. It was an amazing experience. I just wanted to take a few minutes to share what it involved, who I spent time with, and how it made an impact – not just short-term,…
Sarahah is the latest social media application to create a stir. Simply put, Sarahah is a one-way, many-to-one anonymous messaging system that allows people to send messages to a particular person without the recipient knowing who sent them. These can come from people you know (from those in your phone contacts, for example) or from…
Last week, I attended a workshop at Harvard entitled “Harmful Speech Online: At the Intersection of Algorithms and Human Behavior.” Sponsored and organized by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy, its goal was to “broadly explore harmful speech…
Ten years ago, computer scientists would contact our Center and ask if we could give them thousands of examples of cyberbullying content – which they wanted to comb through to look for trends and patterns in how harm was inflicted. Nowadays, they don’t ask for data because it’s widely available for them to web scrape…
Last week I received an email from Martin Cocker, a friend and colleague who runs the Netsafe organization in New Zealand. Netsafe is a one-stop shop for all things related to online safety. If you are a New Zealander who is being mistreated online, or work with someone who is, Netsafe can help. Last year…
When you sign up for the “Blue Whale Challenge,” you are given a series of tasks over a period of 50 days. One day you could be told to watch a scary movie at 4:20am, while on another you might be required to cut yourself. On the 50th day though, to win the challenge, you…
The inaugural World Anti-Bullying Forum was held in Sweden this week (where the cherry blossoms were blooming!), and I had the honor of representing the Cyberbullying Research Center and the International Bullying Prevention Association (IBPA) in attending. I am doing some work at Dublin City University for the first half of this summer, and so…
Over six years ago I wrote a post where I offered advice to teens who receive a sext. “Sexting” is when someone takes a naked or semi-naked (explicit) picture or video of themselves, usually using their phone, and sends it to someone else. We are mostly concerned with these behaviors as they occur among middle…
We have talked a lot about resilience over the last year, and have shared some practical ways to cultivate that ability. Today, I want to provide some additional tangible strategies to help you further. I have previously discussed that it is critical for kids to be placed intentionally in situations where they can discover their…
Resilience online is built in the same way as resilience offline. We must provide opportunities for youth to face social and relational problems head on, and to recognize their own strength, agency, and power to overcome them – do so within an environment of supportive resources (so they know you and I have their back!).…
League of Legends (or League for short) is the most popular multiplayer online game in the world, and takes place in a 3-D battle arena setting involving role-playing and real-time strategy elements into its live environment. Players in League (also known as “summoners”) are matched up with others depending on their skill and game level…
