Search Results for: suicide

People who want to ban the social networks might consider what can be learned on them about at-risk youth. Peers and adults can detect and have found threats in blogs and profiles in time to avert violence, and law-enforcement people certainly are monitoring the sites. The challenge is the obscurity of some of them, such as VampireFreaks.com, where shooter Kimveer Gill posted many hints about … [Read more...] about Social Web: Early warning system?

There have been many such convictions - this is just a recent example so parents can be on the alert for danger signs. A 32-year-old man in Texas was convicted for criminal solicitation of a minor, the Texas attorney general's office reports. In this case, the minor was a 12-year-old girl in Missouri. She went to her mother distraught because the man, "who has sent her more than 200 sexually … [Read more...] about Online predator convicted

As with Columbine High, the Internet is being looked at as having a possible role in Jeff Weise's tragic shooting spree in a Minnesota high school this week. But it might help parents to consider that the reasons for this tragedy have more to do with people than with technology - people online and offline. A number of posts associated with Jeff, in blogs and discussion boards, indicate the mental … [Read more...] about MN tragedy: Whither the Net?

Harassment and bullying can take on "a new and ominous tone" when it happens online, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. Especially when online "buddies" encourage a despondent young person, such as Ryan Halligan (who reportedly found solace in the anonymity of Net communications), to commit suicide in October 2003. His dad, "an IBM manager who built his own computers, [John] Halligan, of Essex … [Read more...] about Schools & cyberbullying

The Korean government this week announced a passel of measures it will be taking to protect children and teens in cyberspace, the Korea Times reports. Some of those measures will be laws requiring ISPs to be "juvenile protectors" and regulating advertising; funding new filtering technology for the Web and P2P networks; monitoring "cyber communities, including those for suicide"; and designating … [Read more...] about Korea & Oz: Porn-blocking moves