This has been a very busy year for us at the Cyberbullying Research Center. We continued our research activities and expanded our outreach and educational efforts. We enjoyed meeting many of you through our travels throughout the United States. We did about 50 presentations, workshops, or assemblies for thousands of youth, parents, educators, and others…
Recently, I spoke about cyberbullying on Wiki-type sites at the annual Answers.com conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Let me first say that the Answers.com community (employees of the company and volunteer supervisors and contributors) is top-notch. I absolutely loved being with them, witnessing their contagious passion for improving user experience on the site, and hearing their…
Evidently, the waters of cyberbullying case law are still murky. Due to variability in opinions and perspectives across jurisdictions and adjudicators, clear precedent is still sometimes elusive. Consider the following case from late 2009 from a California District Court (08-cv-03824, J.C. v. Beverly Hills Unified School District), in which an eighth-grader was cyberbullied through the…
Earlier this week, I participated in a Summit organized by the National District Attorneys Association and the National Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse with a variety of professionals in the child protection arena. While other attendees focused in on the problem of child sex trafficking, my small group concentrated on the phenomenon of…
I was in Naperville, Illinois about two weeks ago for a cyberbullying summit sponsored by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office. The audience was comprised of select stakeholders in education, law enforcement, and technology industry. The most relevant companies and constituencies were there. Attorney General Lisa Madigan was on hand to kick the event off with…
If you’ve logged into Facebook over the last few hours, you may have noticed an open letter from its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. The letter discusses forthcoming improvements to better safeguard the experience and participation of users on the site. We at the Cyberbullying Research Center highly approve of these changes, and believe they will assist…
An interesting controversy has emerged in the last couple of weeks over the word “meep.” What does meep even mean? Frankly, it doesn’t really matter. In fact there are numerous and varied definitions of, and uses for, the word meep. The most frequent use among adolescents, it seems, is to replace an inappropriate word with…
I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to present alongside Tina Meier last week at a cyberbullying event in Detroit sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League. I have spoken to Tina on the phone several times in the past, but this was the first time that I was able to meet her in person. By…
One major outcome that we have seen in recent years has been the increase in suicides related to an experience with bullying. As a point of reference, in 2004, suicide was the third-leading cause of deaths among those between the ages of 10 and 24. Even though suicide rates have decreased 28.5 percent between 1990…
I really liked this article on “Cyber-Mentors”, a relatively new program from BeatBullying (based in the UK) that is gaining traction. Justin and I believe strongly in the power of older students and youth to provide guidance and advice to younger students as it relates to peer conflict (especially the online variant). Many of the…
I really liked this article on “Cyber-Mentors”, a relatively new program from BeatBullying (based in the UK) that is gaining traction. Justin and I believe strongly in the power of older students and youth to provide guidance and advice to younger students as it relates to peer conflict (especially the online variant). Many of the…
This article discusses two bills currently being considered on the American legislative landscape: Representative Linda Sanchez’s (D-CA) “Megan Meier Cyber Bullying Prevention Act” (H.R. 1966) and Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s (D-FL) “Adolescent Web Awareness Requires Education Act” (H.R. 3630). Justin and I are personally a big fan of Schultz’s AWARE Act, because education is the…
