Read the latest news and brand new pieces on youth, social media, and emerging technologies! We focus on preventing harm and promoting positive online behaviors.

Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation Launch, and School Climate! post thumbnail

Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation Launch, and School Climate!

Justin and I had a great time at Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation launch at Harvard University last week.  It was amazing to be surrounded by such brilliant scholars, researchers, and practitioners from across the United States, and even a few from England and Australia.  The professional event we were a part of was […]

Wisconsin’s Bullying Law post thumbnail

Wisconsin’s Bullying Law

As a resident of the state of Wisconsin and someone who follows bullying legislation from around the United States pretty closely (see our summary here), I was particularly interested to learn that a proposal was being put forward to update Wisconsin’s bullying law.  Wisconsin’s law  took effect in 2010 and requires schools to have a […]

Facebook for Educators, and the issues we need to consider post thumbnail

Facebook for Educators, and the issues we need to consider

I have been chatting with my colleague Nancy Willard from Embrace Civility in the Digital Age about Facebook in schools, and how they should and should not be used by educators. These are her recent thoughts with some of my input added…just to get some more discussion going on this issue. We both think that […]

Facebook Timeline and Your Privacy post thumbnail

Facebook Timeline and Your Privacy

By now, you have probably seen Facebook’s newest controversial overhaul to profile pages.  Dubbed “Facebook Timeline,” the latest out of Palo Alto is being described by the social networking behemoth as a new way to “Tell your life story.” With these changes, it is clear that Facebook intends to allow its users to do just […]

160,000 Students Stay Home from School Every Day Because of Bullying. Really? post thumbnail

160,000 Students Stay Home from School Every Day Because of Bullying. Really?

At the Cyberbullying Research Center we strive to approach the issue of teen technology use and misuse from a data-informed perspective. Just to be clear, data doesn’t just mean bar charts. Over the last ten years we have formally surveyed over 12,000 middle and high school students, so yes, we have a lot of bar […]

Bullying Law Summary Fact Sheet Updated post thumbnail

Bullying Law Summary Fact Sheet Updated

We have just updated one of our most popular resources. You can find our latest bullying law fact sheet here. As you can see, all but 2 states now have bullying laws in place or scheduled to take effect in 2012. Most of these (35) include language about electronic forms of bullying while still relatively […]

What is the story with IsAnyoneUp.com? post thumbnail

What is the story with IsAnyoneUp.com?

One of the Internet’s latest privacy controversies surrounds the rapidly-growing web site Isanyoneup.com.  The site, which launched in late 2010, is essentially a hybrid of social media and amateur pornography – described by some media outlets as a blog for “Revenge Porn.” The blog features thousands of posts containing extremely explicit photos of naked men […]

Cyberbullies Move Beyond the Schoolyard post thumbnail

Cyberbullies Move Beyond the Schoolyard

For those of you who didn’t see, I recently wrote a blog for Huffington Post UK to correspond with the cyberbullying event in London that I was a part of.  Here it is: Teens have been bullying each other for generations. The latest generation, however, has been able to utilize technology to expand their reach […]

Cyberbullying Event in London post thumbnail

Cyberbullying Event in London

On Friday, 25th of November, I will be participating in a discussion at Birkbeck’s School of Business, Economics and Informatics at the University of London. (for more information about the event, click here.)  There I will talk about what I have learned about how teens are using technology to cause harm to their peers, along […]

Cyberbullying and Substance Use post thumbnail

Cyberbullying and Substance Use

Much of our work over the last several years has focused on identifying the consequences associated with cyberbullying. We are especially interested in offline behaviors or experiences, as well as links to delinquency and school problems. And we are concerned with the outcomes of both targets and those who engage in cyberbullying. One particular problem […]