What?! A little videogame play a day is actually good for children? That's what an Oxford University researcher found in a study of 5,000 UK 10-to-15-year-olds that looked into both the positive and negative impacts of videogaming. "Young people who spent less than an hour a day engaged in video games were better adjusted than those who did not play at all," the BBC reports, citing the study … [Read more...] about A bit of videogaming is good for kids: Study
Virginia teen sexting case: (Somewhat) reduced injustice
It was a picture-perfect example of how a law intended to protect children can be used to victimize them. But the juvenile judge didn't comment on the perversion of justice – or the prosecution's victimization of a teenager by ordering police to photograph the boy's genitals and threatening even more abusive treatment. He just eased the punishment meted out to the boy (his girlfriend was not … [Read more...] about Virginia teen sexting case: (Somewhat) reduced injustice
‘Revenge porn’: Exposing cruel disclosure
This is a sidebar to my earlier post about social norms as one of the solutions to social cruelty online, zooming in on one form of it. "Revenge porn" needs to be understood and exposed for what it is so it can be neutralized. Its power to harm will lessen as we stigmatize the shaming rather than its victims. So let's be completely clear about what revenge porn is: malicious distribution of … [Read more...] about ‘Revenge porn’: Exposing cruel disclosure
Zooming in on social norms
This is a sidebar to my earlier post about social norms as one of the solutions to social cruelty online – in case readers would like a little more definition. Social norms are practically super powers. As I mentioned in my main post, this doesn't occur to us much because, well, these are norms, after all – part of the wallpaper, socially speaking. They're everyday behavior based on intangibles … [Read more...] about Zooming in on social norms
Beginning of the end of #purge, revenge porn or social cruelty?
We so want to believe it: that the fact that Twitter and Instagram are actively taking down #purge-related accounts signals "the tipping point of this particular phenomenon – and its end has begun," as professor, author and cyberbullying expert Sameer Hinduja writes in an informative blog post. It's very possible we're seeing the tipping point of this week's hot Hollywood premiere-inspired … [Read more...] about Beginning of the end of #purge, revenge porn or social cruelty?