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
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…
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
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
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…
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 […]
UCLA Research on Cyberbullying
A new research piece on cyberbullying was published recently by a couple of UCLA professors that pointed out that 72% of youth between 12-17 experienced online bullying within the past year. I find this number insanely high; the authors rightly note that their web-based methodology (constructed very similar to our older studies) possibly led to […]
Cell phones on School Campuses in California
In keeping with a trend we have been seeing across the country, another school board in California has decided to ban the inappropriate use of cell phones on school grounds (largely to prevent cyberbullying and the recording and online posting of fights). There is one exception – students are able to use cell phones to […]
Teachers and students “friending” on MySpace
CNN posted an interesting story about teachers setting up MySpace pages and “friending” their students…and about a Missouri legislator sponsoring a bill banning elementary school teachers from doing so. I was talking to Justin about this, and we both agree that a state bill banning this activity is completely overboard (another example of how politicians […]
