I've recently partnered with Facebook and co-authors Linda Phillips and Dr. BJ Fogg to write the Facebook for Educators Guide!
The guide is also available in Spanish, Portuguese and German.
Did you know 1 out of 4 kids are bullied every month in the U.S? In an effort to support this year’s Bullying Awareness Week theme, this infographic, “School Bullying Outbreak” shares facts about the methods, consequences and preventative measures related to bullies and bullied victims in schools.
We’d love your help in sharing this infographic as part of your educational outreach and campaigns focused on preventing school bullying.
View Large | Source: MAT@USC: Masters in Teaching
Lady Gaga on Wednesday launched the Born This Way Foundation to support programs dealing with youth empowerment and help people facing bullying and abandonment.
To date, Lady Gaga has harnessed the power of the Internet to attract more than 44 million fans on Facebook and 15 million followers on Twitter.
The foundation, named after her Grammy-winning album and single of the same name, was launched by Lady Gaga and her mother, Cynthia Germanotta.
"My mother and I have initiated a passion project. Together we hope to establish a standard of Bravery and Kindness, as well as a community worldwide that protects and nurtures others in the face of bullying and abandonment."
It follows on the singer's interests in supporting youth issue. Last year she partnered with Virgin Mobile to raise awareness of homeless youth and after the suicide of bullying victim Jeremy Rodemyer she elevated the issue of bullying in schools into the national spotlight and even raised the issue with President Obama.
The Born This Way Foundation will be work closely with the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and The California Endowment, both focusing on youth empowerment.
The Foundation will also work with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, which focuses on the power of the Internet as a means to promote change.
Earlier this week Jamey Rodemeyer, a 14-year-old high school freshman from Buffalo, N.Y., committed suicide after enduring years of bullying for his sexuality. Jamey even shared his story by posting a video on YouTube as part of the 'It Gets Better' campaign.
Yesterday Jamey was buried by his family, and in his honor Lady Gaga dedicated her performance of "Hair" to him during a set at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas.
Rodemeyer was a huge Gaga fan, and even thanked her in his final blog post. His death seems to have had a profound effect on the pop star, who's announced on her Twitter that she wants to meet with President Obama to press for legislation that would make bullying a hate crime.
This isn't the first time the singer has leveraged her star power to shed a light on youth issues. Lady Gaga has also been a relentless supporter and advocate of homeless youth.
In 2010 Lady Gaga joined forces with Virgin Mobile RE*Generation, a pro-social initiative to provide awareness, funding and volunteerism to tackle youth homelessness.
Recent figures estimate that over two million youth (between the ages of 12 and 24) will experience at least one episode of homelessness each year and over 100,000 youth sleep on the street for 6 months or more in America.
Youth homelessness is the result of other societal problems like poverty, drug abuse and addiction, mental illness and domestic violence which is often spiked in cases of homophobia. Young people who've grown up homeless often spend much of their adult lives homeless.
On Thursday, the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention will bring together communities from across the nation who have been affected by bullying as well as those who are taking action to address it.
Every day, thousands of kids, teens, and young adults around the country are bullied both online and offline. Estimates are that nearly one-third of all school-aged children are bullied each school year - upwards of 13 million students.
Students involved in bullying are more likely to have challenges in school, to abuse drugs and alcohol, and to have health and mental health issues. If we fail to address bullying we put ourselves at a disadvantage for increasing academic achievement and making sure all of our students are college and career ready.
As part of the agenda, Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett will host a policy panel with issue experts including Catherine Bradshaw of Johns Hopkins University, George Sugai from the University of Connecticut, Susan Swearer-Napolitano from the University of Nebraska, as well as the Cyberbullying Research Center's Justin Patchin.
The White House Conference on Bullying Prevention will be streamed via Facebook Live starting at 12:20pm ET. President and Ms. Obama have also released a video PSA about bullying that was released exclusively on Facebook.
Some of the featured guests include:
• Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan: Joe, a former federal prosecutor and founding member of the Justice Department's Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property Units, oversees safety and security for Facebook's more than 500 million active users.
• Rosalind Wiseman: Rosalind is an internationally recognized expert on teens, parenting and bullying. Her book Queen Bees and Wannabes, was the basis for the movie Mean Girls, and her follow-up book, Queen Bee Moms and Kingpin Dads, addresses the social hierarchies and conflicts among parents.
• Togetherville Founder Mandeep Dhillon: Mandeep is the founder of Togetherville, a social networking community designed to connect kids, friends and families. Mandeep is one of the leading voices and authorities on pre-tween and tweens and the social web.
• MTV Vice President of Public Affairs Jason Rzepka: Jason is responsible for marshaling the network’s forces to engage and activate America’s youth on the biggest challenges facing their generation.
Related: Social Networking Safety & Privacy Tips for Parents, Teachers & Kids
The LG Text Ed program, which was launched in early 2010, offers parents a number of articles, tips, videos and other content so they can educate themselves on the dangers of mobile phone misuse, employ strategies to help protect their children from potential problems, and discover how they might be modeling their children’s mobile phone behavior.
In a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, presented during the Federal Communication Commission’s recent Generation Mobile Forum, 40 percent of teens said they’ve been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a way that put themselves or others in danger.
LG Text Ed with Jane Lynch
Bringing her trademark intensity and flair to the LG Text Ed campaign, award-winning actress Jane Lynch is working with LG Mobile Phones to raise awareness about risky mobile phone behavior.
In a series of comedic vignettes, which can be viewed on www.LGTextEd.com, Lynch tackles issues such as sexting, texting while driving, mobile bullying, and other questionable teen behaviors.
At the end of each video, Lynch directs parents to LGTextEd.com where they can find professional advice and guidance to help promote safe and responsible mobile usage among their text- and tech-savvy families.
In the texting while driving video, Lynch confronts a classroom of parents about their own texting and driving bad habits and urges parents to model good behavior for their children.
Using humor to get to the heart of the issue, Lynch helps parents help themselves by putting the phone away in the car and encouraging their kids to do the same.
Parents can find additional information on the LG Text Ed initiative and mobile phone misuse (mobile bullying, sexting) by visiting www.lgtexted.com. You can also connect with LG Text Ed on Facebook.
Related: 'No Phone Zone' Lesson Plan: Teaching Teens the Dangers of Texting & Driving
Like Facebook, but wish your information wasn't so public?
Time to lock your settings down. Facebook doesn't make this easy, however; features are constantly added and the default for each new one seems to favor transparency instead of privacy.
The result: there are hundreds of little changes you need to make to truly control where your information goes.
The (Very) Unofficial Facebook Privacy Manual
This handy guide outlines everything you could ever want to know about locking down your privacy on Facebook, and a few things you probably didn't even know you wanted to know.
This guide outlines a variety of things regarding Facebook privacy, including:
“It gets better… It gets so much better… I promise, it gets so much better.”
These are the promises of participants in the It Gets Better Project, founded by advice columnist Dan Savage. In September 2010, following a rash of suicides by gay teens bullied by their peers, Savage created a YouTube channel to offer hope to those in similar situations.
The goal was to showcase the positive and fulfilling lives led by Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer adults, and to give LGBTQ young people something to hold on to when they saw only misery in their futures. Savage encouraged adult members of the queer community to upload their own videos describing how life “got better” for them after high school.
The response was enormous. Savage received 3,000 emails about the project in its first 24 hours. Over 200 videos were uploaded in the first week, and the limit of 650 videos for a single YouTube channel was reached a week after that. Savage set up a website to help direct users to the many new videos being uploaded every day to other channels.
Hollywood stepped in as well, with videos uploaded by celebrities such as Tim Gunn (Project Runway), Zachary Quinto (Star Trek) and President Barack Obama.
Though the star power helped bring visibility to the campaign, Savage emphasized a focus on average, everyday LGBTQ adults. He wanted to show kids that you don’t have to be rich and famous to be happy and find love, whatever form of love that may be.
"It Gets Better" is a good message for all bullied teenagers, no matter the reason for being bullied.
Online buzz spiked when news of American Idol contestant Adam Lambert’s contribution to the project hit Twitter. A GLAAD campaign to “wear purple”on October 20 to raise awareness of anti-gay bullying gained traction on Facebook and Twitter.
Some participants even reported wearing purple despite not knowing the reason why – they simply saw it in their feeds and wanted to fit in with their friends (who quickly told them about the campaign).
The power of social media over behavior can be staggering.
via www.nmincite.com
TRUSTe, provider of the leading privacy trustmark, has announced the results of a survey of parents and their teenagers on social networking behaviors – the first national social networking privacy survey to be conducted on both parents and their teens that also measures parental expectations against actual teen behavior.
The study is titled “The Kids are Alright,” as it reflects in many ways parents and teens doing the right things on social networks.
The survey found that overwhelming 98 percent of parents indicate that both their teen’s privacy – as well as control over their own personal information – is important, very important or extremely important when using social media websites.
Social Networking Privacy Tips for Parents
The majority of parents and teens said they feel confident about the safeguards they have in place for their Facebook accounts, although 89 percent of parents want default privacy settings on all teen accounts to limit the amount of information that is public and to restrict advertiser and application access to their teen’s information.
Parents are looking for more direct ways to control their teen’s information and overall want greater control. Not surprisingly, most parents spend less time than teens on social networking and Facebook, although the majority of both groups checked Facebook at least once a day and frequently more often.
Related: Digital Parenting Resources: Teens, Social Media & Cyberbullying
TRUSTe, provider of the leading privacy trustmark, has announced the results of a survey of parents and their teenagers on social networking behaviors – the first national social networking privacy survey to be conducted on both parents and their teens that also measures parental expectations against actual teen behavior.
The poll included responses from two thousand parents and teenagers to reveal: their level of involvement with social networks; perceptions and concerns about their privacy when using social networks; and parental monitoring and engagement with their teens on social networks.
The study is titled “The Kids are Alright,” as it reflects in many ways parents and teens doing the right things on social networks. Overall, the survey suggests that parents and teens are doing a number of the right activities to protect their privacy:
However, teens are still engaging in potentially harmful activities:
TRUSTe: Social Networking & Privacy Survey
Facebook clearly dominates as the leading social networking site with a whopping 95 percent of parents and 90 percent of teens with a social networking account using the popular site.
Within households where both the adult and teen reported Facebook accounts, one-third of teens surveyed said they helped open and set up the account for one or both of their parents, and most of those teens are friends with their parents, with more girls friending parents than boys.
Teens also engaged in more social networking activities than parents, such as chatting, playing games, sharing online content and taking quizzes and on average have a larger number of Facebook friends.
TRUSTe, provider of the leading privacy trustmark, has announced the results of a survey of parents and their teenagers on social networking behaviors – the first national social networking privacy survey to be conducted on both parents and their teens that also measures parental expectations against actual teen behavior.
Here is a list of top privacy tips for teens as complied by the staff over at TRUSTe!
Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that provides families with information about media and technology, launches its new multiplatform public awareness campaign Power to the Parent.
Designed to educate parents about the impact that media has on kids' live and the importance of parents (and parenting) in this picture, the campaign is supported by a $40 million TV ad campaign, online manner ads, a microsite, and a social media component.
The goal of Power to the Parent is to get parents to be involved in kids' lives and how they are using media to help them make educated and safe choices when using various media. The campaign includes three parent-targeted TV spots, tilted Role Models, Stadium, and Time Spent, which are already airing and will continue to run over the next year.
Comcast, Cox Communications, DirecTV, NBC Universal, and Time Warner Cable are supporting the TV campaign. The online initiative is supported by Common sense Media's partners Yahoo!, Facebook, GreatSchools, and Hulu, all of which will offer a connection to the campaign microsite via banner ads, links, and other content.
IN 2007 Danah Boyd heard a white American teenager describe MySpace, the social network, as “like ghetto or whatever.” At the time, Facebook was stealing members from MySpace, but most people thought it was just a fad: teenagers tired of networks, the theory went, just as they tired of shoes.
But after hearing that youngster, Ms Boyd, a social-media researcher at Microsoft Research New England, felt that something more than whimsy might be at work. “Ghetto” in American speech suggests poor, unsophisticated and black. That led to her sad conclusion: in their online life, American teenagers were recreating what they knew from the physical world—separation by class and race.
A generation of digital activists had hoped that the web would connect groups separated in the real world. The internet was supposed to transcend colour, social identity and national borders. But research suggests that the internet is not so radical. People are online what they are offline: divided, and slow to build bridges.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Header Artwork by BT Livermore
Social Icons Courtesy of Davide Di Cillo
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