Video, Ben Halpert Presents - Cyber Threats: Teach Your Kids
How to Defend Themselves

A follow-up to his informative class, "Cyber Threats: Our Children are Targets, Know What They're Up Against" Ben Halpert will delve into what you as a parent or other adult caregiver can do to help the children in your life make smart decisions regarding technology use.

The Learning Annex
Inst: Ben Halpert, Savvy Cyber Kids

As Bullies Go Digital, Parents Play Catch-Up

It is difficult enough to support one’s child through a siege of schoolyard bullying. But the lawlessness of the Internet, its potential for casual, breathtaking cruelty, and its capacity to cloak a bully’s identity all present slippery new challenges to this transitional generation of analog parents.

Desperate to protect their children, parents are floundering even as they scramble to catch up with the technological sophistication of the next generation.

Like Marie, many parents turn to schools, only to be rebuffed because officials think they do not have the authority to intercede. Others may call the police, who set high bars to investigate. Contacting Web site administrators or Internet service providers can be a daunting, protracted process.

When parents know the aggressor, some may contact that child’s parent, stumbling through an evolving etiquette in the landscape of social awkwardness. Going forward, they struggle with when and how to supervise their adolescents’ forays on the Internet.

Court: Cyberbullying Threats Are Not Protected Speech

A California appeals court ruled this week that threatening posts made by readers of a website are not protected free speech, allowing a case charging the posters with hate crimes and defamation to proceed.

The case raises fundamental questions about cyberbullying and the line between online speech and hate crimes.

In her dissenting opinion, Judge Frances Rothschild said the appellate court ruling “alters the legal landscape to the severe detriment of First Amendment rights.”

2009 AP-MTV Digital Abuse Study

3 in 10 young people report having been involved in some type of naked sexting.

- Incidence overall is higher among 18-24s (33%) than 14-17s (24%).
- Similar numbers (29%) report receiving messages “with sexual words or images” by text or on the internet.

Sexts often have unintended viewers and are often forwarded as a form of social currency by those looking to show off or be funny.

- Nearly 1 in 5 sext recipients (17%) report that they have passed the images along to someone else. More than half (55%) of those who passed the images to someone else say they shared them with more than one person.
- The most popular reasons given for forwarding sexts include the assumption that others would want to see them (52%), a desire to show off (35%), and boredom (26%).
- Teens also report that they have shared sexts as joke (31%) or to be funny (30%).
- 14% of young people who have shared a naked photo or video of themselves suspect that the recipient probably shared the image with someone else without permission.

Software That Guards Virtual Playgrounds

VIRTUAL worlds for children and teenagers — Web sites like Neopets, Club Penguin and Habbo — are a big business. On these sites, children create an avatar and, with it, explore an imaginary universe. They can play games, chat and decorate virtual rooms or other spaces...

As the number of these virtual worlds grows, so, too, does the demand for sophisticated monitoring software and people, called moderators, who can act as virtual playground monitors. Tamara Littleton, chief executive of eModeration, a company based in London that provides moderation services, says the most common dangers that children and teenagers face online are bullying and young people’s own efforts to share personal information that could enable strangers to identify and contact them in the real world.