This is news, and not just for the Internet safety field. It's important for policymakers, parents, educators, researchers, healthcare providers and journalists to know about: In the Journal of Child Psychology, sociologist David Finkelhor, one of the US's most prominent experts on child victimization, challenges the "alarmism reflected by so much of the scholarly and journalistic literature" about … [Read more...] about Net safety’s ‘3 alarmist assumptions’: Researcher
youth online risk
Factors in good policymaking about youth & digital media
Informed citizens sometimes forget that the reason why negative, tragic or just plain-old bad news is news is because it's the exception to the rule. That's why it's newsworthy. And this is true whether we're hearing about airplane crashes or online bullying. Sometimes the news is unspeakably tragic, but it's still the exception, not the rule. It's not an event from which we can extrapolate what … [Read more...] about Factors in good policymaking about youth & digital media
‘Noodz,’ ‘selfies,’ ‘sexts,’ etc., Part 1: A spectrum of motivations
Despite what we see in news headlines, there is no single term that people who share nude photos use, according to Australian researcher and author Nina Funnell, who has interviewed some 4 dozen 16-to-25-year-olds about it. Especially not "sexting," she said in a talk I got to hear in Sydney this spring (their fall). Using the term tends to alienate young people, she said. And there are many more … [Read more...] about ‘Noodz,’ ‘selfies,’ ‘sexts,’ etc., Part 1: A spectrum of motivations
Study on long-neglected factor in Net safety: Resilience
As a society, we've been talking about youth online risk for years, but we've only just begun to talk about young people's resilience, which is what helps them keep risk from turning into harm. It's important to know, as the authors of an important new report note, that resilience – the ability to deal with negative experiences without being upset by them – doesn't come from avoiding risk, online … [Read more...] about Study on long-neglected factor in Net safety: Resilience
Declines in 2 online risks for youth: Study
Good news for online kids on two fronts this week. We're seeing a continuing decline in online sexual solicitations of young people. The widely misrepresented 2000 figure from the Crimes Against Children Research Center was "1 in 5" (more in a minute on the misrepresentation); the 2005 one was "1 in 7" (13%), and the CCRC has just announced that it's now 9% in 2010, which was when the CCRC … [Read more...] about Declines in 2 online risks for youth: Study