This week, the Washington Post proclaimed that “sexting is the new first base.” This assertion was grounded in the results of a research study first published in 2012 (based on data from 2010). Researchers found that over one-fourth (28%) of 948 teens from seven public high schools in southeast Texas had sent a naked picture…
Adolescent girls tend to participate in more indirect, less visible forms of bullying, including psychological and emotional harassment (e.g., rumor spreading and other forms of relational aggression). Given the fact that the vast majority of cyberbullying behaviors involve these indirect forms of harassment, it makes sense that most research suggests that girls appear equally as…
I was recently asked to write a guest blog directed towards teen girls and related to issues of harassment and bullying online and offline…and so I wanted to share it with our readers. It has a very conversational tone, and reflects what I want to convey to this population as they navigate the difficult waters…
There has been a lot of interest in our sexting guide for educators and parents and so I thought it would be a good time to highlight a couple of other findings from that research. Data for this study were collected in the spring of 2010 among a random sample of middle and high school…
I was recently walking around with a friend and saw a girl (who looked to be around nine years of age) wearing a shirt that proclaimed “Born to be SEXY” – which caught me off guard. Not to be a prude, but it bothers me that cultural messaging strategies continue to induce girls to think…
We’ve discussed different elements of the Phoebe Prince case a number of times on this blog. Recall that Phoebe was the 15-year-old girl who committed suicide in January after being bullied and cyberbullied. She moved to South Hadley, Massachusetts, from Ireland at the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year. Being the new girl, she had…
I hardly ever blog about my upcoming presentations, but I am particularly excited about my next one and so I thought I would let you know about it. I am giving a keynote at the annual Stop Girl Bullying Conference this Sunday in San Antonio, Texas, and hope that you can come if you are…
This Research Summary highlights the specific cyberbullying experiences of teenaged girls through the content analysis of detailed responses received from victims. Burgess-Proctor, A., Hinduja, S. & Patchin, J. W. (2009). Cyberbullying research summary: Victimization of Adolescent Girls. Cyberbullying Research Center. Retrieved [insert date], from https://cyberbullying.org/cyberbullying_girls_victimization.pdf Download PDF
I just read an interesting article covering a topic that is frequently brought to our attention when we speak at conferences – cell phones and sexually-explicit images of teenagers being circulated among peers. The bottom line is that we have got to figure out the best way to get kids to think hard and seriously about…
This story, which involves a digitally-recorded video of three teens throwing a 32-ounce soda on a girl working the window at a Taco Bell drive-thru, is a newer iteration of cyberbullying which we’re seeing more often. The boys posted the video on YouTube, which led to repeated embarrassment and humiliation for the girl. She was…
Indictments were filed yesterday in the Megan Meier case. For those of you unfamiliar with the case, you can read the story here. In short, Megan Meier was the 13-year-old from Missouri who committed suicide after being cyberbullied on MySpace. To make matters worse, the offender was a fictitious 16-year-old boy who was created by…
So…I’m sure by now you all have heard the news story and seen the attendant video of the cheerleader in Lakeland, Florida who was lured into a “friend’s” home and then severely beaten by that friend and other cheerleaders. All of this for basically talking smack over MySpace (cyberbullying?) about those friends. So what we…