cyberbullying

WASHINGTON -- A long awaited report from the Internet Safety Technical Task Force concludes that children and teens are less vulnerable to sexual predation than many have feared. The report also questions the efficacy and necessity of some commonly prescribed remedies designed to protect young people.

The task force was formed as a result of a joint agreement between MySpace and 49 state attorneys general.

Over the past couple of years, several state AGs have been looking into potential dangers to youth, and some have called for social-network sites to use age verification technology to confirm the ages of users … Read more

From a MySpace-related suicide to hate speech on YouTube, the world of user-generated content has been plagued by plain, old nastiness since its early days.

That's why, as part of the Family Online Safety Institute conference in Washington, D.C., YouTube parent company Google has unveiled an "Abuse and Safety" resource guide.

According to a post on the official Google blog, the new section of YouTube's help center features "straightforward safety tips and multimedia resources from experts and prominent safety organizations" regarding topics like cyberbulling, privacy, spam, and sexual exploitation.

YouTube also said that … Read more

Lori Drew, the Missouri woman who created a fake MySpace profile that she allegedly used to harass a teenage girl to the point of suicide, was convicted of three offenses far more minor than the ones she could have been, the Associated Press wrote Wednesday.

Drew, indicted in May by a federal court after Missouri prosecutors could not find evidence of a state crime, had been charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of "accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress."

On Wednesday, a federal jury in Los Angeles failed to … Read more

Online bullying could be more pervasive than you think.

Three out of four teens were bullied online over the last year, according to a study released this week by psychologists at the University of California at Los Angeles. And while that number may seem high at the outset, only 1 in 10 of those kids told their parents or another adult about it, the study showed.

The anonymous Web-based study surveyed 1,454 kids between the ages of 12 and 17. Of those, 41 percent reported between one and three cyberbullying incidents during the year; 13 percent reported four to … Read more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--A grassroots organization is working on a help line to support kids dealing with cyberbullying and other online issues, particularly on social networks.

In an interview Wednesday following a meeting of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force at Harvard University, Parry Aftab, the director of the national advocacy group WiredSafety, said her organization had started working on a pilot project to support cyber-bullying targets in West Chester County, New York.

Aftab and three student volunteers from WiredSafety's Teenangels program spoke at the conference. Teenangels was started in 1999 as a mentoring program that trains teenagers to teach … Read more

School bullies who use the Internet or text messaging to harass fellow students could be kicked out of school under a bill being considered by the California Legislature.

Assembly Bill 86, introduced by Assemblyman Ted Lieu of Torrance, passed the Senate on Monday by a 21-11 vote and now heads back to the Assembly for consideration of Senate amendments, according to an Associated Press report. If the Assembly approves the Senate amendments, the bill will be sent to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Lieu's bill would allow students to be suspended or expelled from school for bullying that occurs via electronic … Read more

A Missouri woman accused of contributing to a teenager's suicide by creating a fake MySpace account to taunt the girl pleaded not guilty in federal court Monday, according to Reuters and other media sources.

After she was implicated in the hoax aimed at harassing a teenage neighbor, Lori Drew of the St. Louis area was charged with conspiracy and accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress.

The case captured the attention of the blogosphere and the world.

The story first broke in Drew's hometown paper, the St. Charles Journal, a year after … Read more

Lawmakers and Internet executives are perking up to the growing problem of kid bully fights on the Web.

Legislators are newly arming themselves with laws that will protect kids from being repeatedly harassed via the Internet, text messages, or other electronic devices. In recent weeks, Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R-Mo.) proposed a federal law that would criminalize acts of so-called cyberbullying (PDF). And Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt was scheduled Friday to sign into state law a similar measure, but the event was postponed because of inclement weather in St. Louis.

Both state and federal laws were … Read more

The school bully isn't necessarily that oversized, physically intimidating kid anymore.

Humiliation by words has become just as popular--if not more so--as children's social lives have migrated online.

Patricia Agatston, a licensed professional counselor and consultant on the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program; Robin Kowalski, professor of psychology at Clemson University; and Sue Limber, director of the Center on Youth Participation and Human Rights at Clemson University, have written a book on the topic.

The authors of Cyber Bullying: Bullying in the Digital Age, which comes out November 14, interviewed approximately 150 middle and high school students during the … Read more