Category: Cyberbullying
Smiley Faces and “LOLs” Do Not Mitigate the Effect of Cyberbullying
Three Indiana girls were expelled from Griffith Public School last week after a concerned mother provided the school principal with a copy of a malicious Facebook thread about her daughter and other students at the school. In the thread, the three girls discussed different ways to kill their classmates, including putting someone in a bathtub [...]
Screen Retriever Review and Installation Guide
As a parent, I always want to know where my children are, who they’re hanging out with, and what they’re doing. I like to try and give them a balance between freedom and safety, let them grow and mature yet still make sure they don’t do anything that has the potential to harm them. This [...]
Cyberbullying and Online Gaming: How to Protect Your Child
First let me say that, just as I am not OK with it offline, I am not okay with the idea of my children talking to strangers online. But that’s exactly what happens in online gaming services like Xbox Live and Playstation Network. As soon as your child logs on to their profile or joins [...]
Yoursphere.com Survey among Kids and Teens Reveals Online Safety Education Works
I want to share some very encouraging research results that really shine a light on the difference online-safety education can make. At Yoursphere Media, Inc., we conducted a survey among our membership at our kids-only social network Yoursphere.com. Members that participated in the October 2011 survey were between the ages of 9 and 15 years [...]
Two Solutions to Help You Detect Cyberbullying on Your Child’s Smartphone
I’ve said it time and time again: face-to-face communication with your child or teen about issues like cyberbullying and sexting, and the consequences of such actions, is the key to helping them make the smartest digital decisions. Of course, not all teens are willing to listen, let alone talk about the issues, and most young [...]
Dealing with the Bullies – Avoiding, Recording and Reporting
Cyberbullying is one of the biggest concerns when it comes to our children being online. Our children live a large portion of their lives online, something that most of us parents can’t relate to, which is exactly why it’s so important that we understand what cyberbullying is, how to avoid it and how to deal [...]
Social Networking Linked to Teen Drug and Alcohol Abuse
Researchers at The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (Columbia University) recently released a study where they found that teens who regularly use social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are twice as likely to smoke marijuana and three times are likely to drink alcohol. As well, the study points out that cyberbullied [...]
An Easy Guide to Help You Teach Online Privacy to Your Child
The online privacy risks that our children face increase as they get older; and this is for several reasons: they’re getting more involved in social networks (as are their friends), they’re using the Internet more often for school research, and they’re growing more curious about the world around them. And if you’re like me, I [...]
How to Deal With Cyberbullies and Online Creeps
It can be a scary thing when you notice a change in your child’s behavior and you come to find out that something happened, or is happening, to them online. That’s what happened to a friend of mine who recently reached out to me. The details are private, but she said her daughter was dealing [...]
Giving In to Tweens Who Want to Join Facebook – Is It Too Much Pressure for a Parent to Bear?
From firsthand experience, I can tell you that it’s very difficult not to simply succumb to the pressures of letting your tween have an account on an adult-intended social network like Facebook. Most of their friends probably have one—in fact, their friends’ younger siblings probably have one. But does that justify giving in? That’s the [...]
Twitter – A Revolutionary Way for Kids to Text for Free, Cyberbully and More
Everyone uses Twitter—or at least it seems that way. Major news companies use it to engage audiences from all over the world; politicians use it to leverage their outreach, and celebrities use it to let their followers know what kind of dressing is on their salad. But, you probably already know all of this. What [...]
50 Percent of Bullies Go Beyond the Playground
Yesterday, technology journalist Larry Magid posted an article in the Huffington Post called “Online Safety Tied to Real World Behavior”. In the article, Magid points to some interesting statistics related to real-world bullying and how it ties into cyberbullying. Magid points to a recent study from the Cyberbullying Research Center: out of 4,400 11-to-18-year-olds, the [...]
Mary Kay is a nationally-recognized Internet safety expert, and the founder of 
