It's a little chilling, but maybe some parents feel they need to go to these lengths to protect their cellphone-using chilling. I can see parents using a product like this openly as a tool for solving a cyberbullying problem that might include calls and text message to a child’s cellphone. It’s called Flexispy, and it’s downloadable monitoring software for cellphones. The Thailand-based company's … [Read more...] about Phone monitoring on steroids
Risk & Safety
Online spin control
There’s an interesting ongoing debate on news sites around the Web about what the digital natives are doing to their reputations and future job prospects with all this public blogging and social networking. At first glance I thought this USATODAY column was just another commentary about how doomed teen social networkers’ reputations are. Then I got to the part with some good advice (maybe I’m just … [Read more...] about Online spin control
Bullying made easy
University of Michigan student Emmarie spent “countless hours” as a teenager “justifying [her] online journal to her parents,” she writes in her university’s student newspaper, The Michigan Daily. They didn’t understand why she wanted to make her private thoughts so public, but she said it made her “feel connected knowing that someone knew my exact mood at that moment … and my side of the latest … [Read more...] about Bullying made easy
Extreme cyberbullying: 2 cases
By “extreme,” I mean bullying that has led to teen suicide attempts. Two such cases involving three New Zealand girls have come to my attention in the past week – one through our BlogSafety forum and the other covered in that country’s national news media. The Sunday News in NZ reported this week that two 15-year-old secondary-school students were tricked by another girl into believing two teenage … [Read more...] about Extreme cyberbullying: 2 cases
Net-safety perspective
This Charlotte Observer columnist makes a darn sensible point. He points to a “National Survey of Children’s Health” by University of Michigan’s Children’s Hospital finding that Internet safety was ranked as the No. 7 children’s health problem by the US public (smoking, drugs, and obesity top the list). What’s interesting, he writes, is that “suicide, depression and cancer didn't make the top 10,” … [Read more...] about Net-safety perspective