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Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L: When Can a School Discipline a Student for Online Speech?
Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate in a panel to discuss the pending Supreme Court case Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. Other panelists were Dr. Eric Kasper, a Professor of Political Science who teaches constitutional law at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and who directs the Menard Center for Constitutional Studies, and Darpana […]
A Teen’s View of Social Media in 2021
Hey everyone! Meet my friend Lucia – she is the perfect person to give you an updated perspective on how teens are using social media in 2021, based on her personal experiences and the observations she’s made among her peer group. I think she deeply understands the draw and attraction of particular apps, and has […]
Snapchat Speech Could be Out-of-Bounds for School Discipline
B.L. was a promising cheerleader at Mahanoy Area High School in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania. She had been involved in the sport since elementary school, and as a freshman participated on the junior varsity team. Going into her sophomore year, she was hoping to make the varsity squad. To her disappointment, she was once again placed […]
Inoculate Against Bullying by Chatting with your Children
I pick my son up from school most days, and from his first day of kindergarten I got into the habit of routinely asking him two specific questions: 1) “How was your day?” and 2) “Was there any bullying?” I’d ask the latter question with a conspiratorial raise of my brow—as if asking him if […]
StopTheB – A New Anti-Bullying Movement
Recently, I have become aware of a cool new global initiative called StopTheB. It is for young people, by young people – and was founded by two sisters, Vasundhara (22) and Riddhi Oswal (16). The main aim of StopTheB is not only to raise awareness and educate on the issues, context, and dynamics of bullying […]
Digital Resilience
We define digital resilience as “positive attitudes and actions in the face of interpersonal adversity online.” While adversity can arise from technological sources as well (e.g., hard drive crashes, forgotten passwords, vulnerable cloud accounts), we are primarily concerned with the social aspect of online interactions that induce anger, frustration, anxiety, fear, embarrassment, and similar outcomes. […]
Tween Social Media and Gaming in 2020
This month we have been highlighting results from our recent national survey of tweens, conducted with our friends at Cartoon Network. In this post, I want to focus on what we learned about the devices tweens have and the apps and games they use. Technology access and use by children is of interest to many, […]
Tween Cyberbullying in the United States
We have been exploring how young people use and misuse technology, with a primary focus on cyberbullying, for nearly two decades. In that time, though, we have almost exclusively studied middle and high school students (12- to 17-year-olds) and their caregivers. Earlier this year we were approached by Cartoon Network with questions about tween experiences […]
Bullying and Cyberbullying: The Connection to Delinquency
Sameer and I have long been interested in the connection between cyberbullying and offline behaviors. Nearly fifteen years ago we published a paper which found preliminary evidence that youth who had been cyberbullied were more at risk to engage in school violence and delinquency. We framed this possible relationship from the perspective of General Strain […]
TikTok: Pros, Cons, and the Promise of Youth Empowerment
Discusses the pros and cons of TikTok, explores the current controversies, and shares how youth are using the popular app in positive ways. I trust by now that you’ve at least heard of TikTok, the fledgling short-form video app that has been around since 2016 but has exploded in popularity since the beginning of the […]
