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Both Sameer and I will be at the Ophelia Project National Conference in Evanston, IL, Thursday and Friday this week (Oct. 16-17) talking about cyberbullying.  We will be presenting a couple of breakout sessions covering issues related to preventing and responding to cyberbullying incidents and legal issues facing educators.  If you are there, stop by and say hi!

We will be participating in a live web chat for EdWeek today from 1-2 Eastern time.  From EdWeek:

“At its best, the Internet helps students find information and stay in touch with friends through everything from text-messages and blogs to social-networking and other video- and photo-sharing Web sites. But the Internet can also enable students to aggressively target and harm their peers. This chat will inform educators and parents on how to recognize cyberbullying and protect young people from becoming victims. Please join us to discuss cyberbullying, a problem affecting growing numbers of students, administrators, teachers, and parents.”

If you are interested in participating with us, log onto http://www.edweek-chat.org around 1pm Eastern today. We look forward to chatting with you this afternoon!

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 a sample of heavy Internet users who were more apt to be involved in online harassment (on either side of the equation).  Specifically, 66% of youth reported online insults, 27% reported online threats, 18% reported being victimizated via someone sharing embarrassing pictures, 25% reported being victimized by someone sharing communications that should have remained private, and 33% reported password theft.  While all of these are very real and do occur among youth, I am really surprised that the percentages are so high.  The researchers also found that 90% of victims do not tell an adult about their victimization; I find this remarkably high as well.  Our research has found that youth have become much more willing to tell an adult (e.g., a teacher, counselor, or parent) over the last few years, perhaps as these important adults make an effort to reach out to kids and demonstrate their availability to help with cyberspace-based problems.  I would be interested in seeing how age is related to talking to an adult in this study; I would expect an inverse relationship with younger kids much more willing to seek out assistance.  The other findings of the piece are largely in keeping with what we have found in terms of how cyberbullying affects youth emotionally, what tactics they employ to deal with the incident, how offline and online bullying are related, and whether victims know the perpetrator in real life.  Nevertheless, the results reported in this article remind us to be mindful of the methodology of the study when interpreting the findings.  How the data are collected seems to be an important consideration.

As most of you know, Justin and I have conducted some studies on the youth use of social networking sites.  Our primary intention was to determine if and how adolescents are rendering themselves vulnerable to victimization based on the content (diary entries, personal information, pictures, video, etc.) they post within their profile pages.  This content can conceivably be used by cyberbullies, predators, and pedophiles to bring embarrassment or harm (both in cyberspace and in the real world).

We’ve also pointed out how individuals can unwittingly open their friends up to victimization by posting or revealing personal information or pictures about them to social networking sites.  This will continue to be a problem, particularly with new developments in technology.  One example that stands out in my mind is Google’s new version of Picasa, their photo-editing and sharing software.  They’ve implemented a facial recognition system that can analyze one picture and then scan for matches across hundreds or millions of others.  As an innocuous example, I might want to upload a picture of myself, tag it as “Sameer Hinduja,” and then allow the software to be continually scanning other photo albums/galleries (e.g., Picasa or Flickr) to see if anyone else might have uploaded another picture of me.  Apart from visual confirmation (when I look and verify if the person in those other pictures is, in fact, me), further corroboration can be made if they are tagged as well (either with my name or one of my fun nicknames!).  Extending this logic, it is easy to envision how someone with malicious or perverse intentions could use this technology to stalk someone else, or even create a dossier of knowledge about that person (based on the pictures) useful for gaining their trust or developing a rapport.  I am a bit concerned.  And this is only the beginning as we move forward in this increasingly panoptic digital age.