When Does Free Speech Become Cyberbullying? post thumbnail

When Does Free Speech Become Cyberbullying?

There was an article published in the New York Times last week which discussed the case of Katherine Evans.  Katherine was displeased with her high school English teacher and posted about this displeasure on Facebook: “To those select students who have had the displeasure of having Ms. Sarah Phelps, or simply knowing her and her […]

Digital “Sexploitation:” An Extreme Example of Cyberbullying post thumbnail

Digital “Sexploitation:” An Extreme Example of Cyberbullying

This story out of New Berlin, WI, reports about very extreme case of cyberbullying.  It is reported that an 18-year-old male student posed as a female student on Facebook and tricked other male students into sending him nude pictures or videos of themselves.  There were at least 31 male students who apparently did so, and […]

Age- and identity-misrepresentation on the Internet post thumbnail

Age- and identity-misrepresentation on the Internet

The New York Times last week asked me my thoughts on the Megan Meier case and online misrepresentation, and I thought I’d expand on my perspective here.  First off, we have to understand why this case drew so much attention.  It was because we have a vulnerable and depressed young girl basically driven to suicide […]

Rates of cyberbullying in Australia, and the reasons why… post thumbnail

Rates of cyberbullying in Australia, and the reasons why…

Just a quick cross-cultural thought – this article discusses how approximately 10% of 9th and 10th graders in Australia have been cyberbullied…and the article compares that figure to the 50% or so (????) of American students who have been cyberbullied.  The lead researcher and professor stated that their country is about five or so years […]

Focal areas within cyberbullying prevention and response post thumbnail

Focal areas within cyberbullying prevention and response

Mike Donlin, Senior Program Consultant (aka Program Manager), for Seattle Public Schools (and our good friend and esteemed colleague) recently asked us a few thought-provoking questions about cyberbullying prevention and response.  They are as follows: 1. How can we consistently involve all the major stakeholders – educators, legal, the tech industry, families and youth – […]

Problematic pictures circulated via cell phones post thumbnail

Problematic pictures circulated via cell phones

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 […]

Wide variation in reports of cyberbullying frequency… post thumbnail

Wide variation in reports of cyberbullying frequency…

As my eyes tend to be super sensitive to statistics and data related to cyberbullying, I was taken aback by the findings from a study mentioned in this recent FoxNews article. It states: According to Parry Aftab, an Internet security and privacy lawyer and founder of WiredSafety.org, 85 percent of 5,000 middle-school students surveyed said […]