Bullying, Cyberbullying, and Suicide Among US Youth: Our Updated Research Findings post thumbnail

Bullying, Cyberbullying, and Suicide Among US Youth: Our Updated Research Findings

There continues to be a lot of discussion involving bullying, cyberbullying, and suicide both in the media as well as in social circles of parents, educators, and other youth professionals. I just looked up “suicide and bullying” on Google News and in just this past weekend alone there are multiple stories involving different kids in […]

International Journal of Bullying Prevention post thumbnail

International Journal of Bullying Prevention

As a cyberbullying scholar, I engage in research related to its identification, prevention, and response and seek to get articles based on this research published in academic journals. By doing so, we can contribute to the extant knowledgebase concerning what we know about cyberbullying, inspire other researchers to advance the proverbial ball, equip educators, mental […]

Federal Commission on School Safety post thumbnail

Federal Commission on School Safety

Yesterday, I testified on “cyberbullying and social media” in front of the Federal Commission of School Safety, chaired by Secretary Betsy DeVos and comprised of Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen (Homeland Security), Secretary Alex Azar (Health and Human Services), and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Collectively, they are trying to garner insight on the ecology of schools and […]

Password Safety: Top Ten Tips for Teens post thumbnail

Password Safety: Top Ten Tips for Teens

(For a formatted .pdf version of this article for distribution, click on the image above [or click here]). Spanish Translation Available Here 1. PROTECT THEM. Never, ever give your password (on Instagram, Snapchat, Xbox Live, Fortnite, email, or any similar service) or cell phone unlock code to anyone—even a friend. Friendships sometimes don’t last, and […]

Ten Ideas for Youth to Educate their Community about Cyberbullying post thumbnail

Ten Ideas for Youth to Educate their Community about Cyberbullying

(For a formatted .pdf version of this article for distribution, click on the image above [or click here]). Spanish Translation Available Here You can be the solution to the cyberbullying problem. Here are a few ideas to get you started: 1. RESEARCH THE PROBLEM. Spend time online to obtain a solid understanding of what cyberbullying […]

Positive Post-It Day post thumbnail

Positive Post-It Day

In case you haven’t heard, Positive Post-It Day is a worldwide phenomenon – and it all began with a Canadian teenager in the fall of 2014 who wanted to flip the script on bullying. Alberta student Caitlin Haacke was bullied at school and threatened on Facebook with suggestions to take her own life. Instead of […]

The Social Bond: A Practical Way for Schools to Reduce Bullying post thumbnail

The Social Bond: A Practical Way for Schools to Reduce Bullying

If you work in the youth safety space, you know that certain initiatives (such as resilience building) have focused on targets of bullying and cyberbullying. Other programming has concentrated attention on aggressors – to the kids who harass, humiliate, and threaten other youth offline and online. Here, restorative practices and social emotional learning (anger management, […]

League of Legends and Cyberbullying post thumbnail

League of Legends and Cyberbullying

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 […]

What you need to know about Musical.ly post thumbnail

What you need to know about Musical.ly

Musical.ly, an increasingly popular app with tweens and teens, allows individuals to create and share short videos that are lip-synced to songs of their choice. Remarkably, there are 80 million registered users, with around 10 million of those active on a daily basis.  These “Musers” – as they are called – upload an average of […]

Revenge Porn Research, Laws, and Help for Victims post thumbnail

Revenge Porn Research, Laws, and Help for Victims

With presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recently pledging at a town hall meeting that she would do whatever she could to end revenge porn (and cyberbullying [call us, Hillary, we can help! Donald, you too!]), I thought it was time to take a closer look at the phenomenon. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about […]