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 […]

Speaking to Teens at Parochial Schools about Bullying post thumbnail

Speaking to Teens at Parochial Schools about Bullying

Apart from our efforts within various public schools around the nation, Justin and I also work regularly with parochial schools as they attempt to reduce bullying and encourage kindness across their campuses. This gives us a chance to really connect with the youth there in a powerful way by dovetailing their faith with a call […]

Getting Teens to Rethink Cyberbullying post thumbnail

Getting Teens to Rethink Cyberbullying

This year, I’ve enjoyed being in touch with Trisha Prabhu, a 14-year-old freshman at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, Illinois. In the fall of 2013, after hearing about a young girl’s suicide because of cyberbullying, she set out to design a long-term solution to cyberbullying. Her work led her to the product Rethink, which […]

Cyberbullying Prevention through Dance and the Spoken Word post thumbnail

Cyberbullying Prevention through Dance and the Spoken Word

As National Bullying Prevention Month rolls on, we continue to highlight extraordinary movements and projects designed to combat cruelty and rekindle kindness, tolerance, and respect. Today, I want to feature the efforts of MusEffect, a very talented dance company out of Los Angeles. I have been in touch with their director, Jessica Starr, because I […]

Standing Up and Speaking Out Against Cyberbullying post thumbnail

Standing Up and Speaking Out Against Cyberbullying

I met Sarah Ball a couple of years ago, as she sat in the front row of a cyberbullying presentation I gave to educators at a national conference held in Orlando. As a teenager, she stood out from the rest of my audience of school professionals. She also stood out in terms of her contagious […]

Combating Bullying During Kindness Week post thumbnail

Combating Bullying During Kindness Week

  In my line of work, I have the amazing opportunity to meet incredibly passionate educators who care so much about students – and do all they can to create and maintain positive climates in which those students can thrive. I’ve known Becky Nahrebeski, a 9th grade Global teacher, for a few years now, and […]

New Year Ideas to Make Kindness Go Viral post thumbnail

New Year Ideas to Make Kindness Go Viral

Our first book for teens (Words Wound: Delete Cyberbullying and Make Kindness Go Viral) came out a few weeks ago, and we’re really excited about its potential impact among students who have dealt with online harassment and want to do something meaningful about it (check it out if you haven’t already!).  That said, our publisher (Free […]

How to Report Cyberbullying on Instagram post thumbnail

How to Report Cyberbullying on Instagram

Explains how to report cyberbullying, abuse, and threats on Instagram. Recently, we’ve discussed general safety tips for teens related to Instagram, and also fleshed out in detail how individuals are cyberbullied on Instagram. Today, I thought I’d summarize the ways in which teens (and adults) should use Instagram and how to report cyberbullying on it […]

Cyberbullying on Instagram post thumbnail

Cyberbullying on Instagram

Last time, I shared my viewpoints on Instagram safety in a general way. Today, I’m going to talk about cyberbullying that occurs on Instagram. As I mentioned, Instagram is minimalistic and intentionally doesn’t provide a lot of features that you might find on Facebook. This also means that various forms of victimization – identity theft, […]

My Advice to Teens about Instagram post thumbnail

My Advice to Teens about Instagram

Instagram is great. I use it and like it very much, for a number of reasons. Even though I have to view it through the lens of “online safety” given my work and professional passion, I still completely support (and am excited about) its widespread and growing adoption by teens (and adults). Similar to other […]