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After a year and a half operating as an unregulated college gossip site, juicycampus is calling it quits.  This is a victory for cyberbullying advocates because we received a number of complaints about this site from those who had been victimized through it.  You can find a press release here, posted by juicycampus discussing the reasons for terminating the site (hint: it’s not because they felt guilty or because they had some kind of moral change of heart about their operation).  Anyway, it should come as no surprise that other sites are quickly jumping in the fray ostensibly filling the void vacated by juicycampus.  Let’s hope they share a similar fate.

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 the offender in this case also reportedly coerced several of them to engage in sexual acts with him by threatening that he would post the pictures online and/or send them to others in the school.

We have certainly heard more and more stories lately of teens taking naked pictures of themselves or others and distributing them electronically.  Like anything, it is important to educate students about the risks inherent in engaging in these kinds of activities.  For example, teens all around the country are being charged with possession or distribution of child pornography for these behaviors–not to mention the social implications associated with this.  By the way, here is a short, but humorous video that can be used to educate youth about this phenomenon.