Blog

Cox Communications and the NCMEC recently held a Teen Summit in Washington, and we are pleased to see that the research they conducted revealed the same findings as our own work, as it relates to the use of various technologies by adolescents, experiences with cyberbullying, and the misuse of personal pictures or content.  Furthermore, one of the major take-home messages from the Summit was that parents and guardians must exercise due diligence in protecting their children and teenagers.  We also underscore the importance of cultivating an open line of communication with your youth, and have created a Cyberbullying Scripts resource that you can download.  This document demonstrates how easy it is to broach the subject matter, and provides you with examples and questions to guide you.  Definitely let us know what has worked and what has not worked in talking to your kids about cyberbullying and responsible online social networking.  It is important for us to identify best practices and then share them with parents, educators, and other professionals who regularly wrestle with this issue.

Our colleague Adam Thierer from the Progress & Freedom Foundation has recently published an informative white paper worth reading entitled “Cyberbullying Legislation: Why Education is Preferable to Regulation.” Justin and I keep having to point out in various conversations that strictly punitive strategies fall short in their effort to deter misbehavior, especially among a youthful population that does not tend to think about long-term implications or consequences.  We continue to champion efforts to educate and raise awareness among youth, and believe that formal research must continually occur to identify patterns and trends in cyberbullying while also discovering its causes and consequences across large groups of adolescents. Along these lines, in the next few weeks we’ll be sharing with you our most recent findings from data collected in May of this year.