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Formspring

Social cruelty on Ask.fm & the whack-a-mole tendency

April 22, 2013 By Anne 13 Comments

Remember Formspring.me? Three years ago some terrible trolling that reportedly involved teens in New Jersey made the site, which announced it was shutting down* last month, a national news story in the US. Teens' viral adoption of Formspring and its format (ask a question, get an anonymous answer) reportedly took the site by surprise. Disturbing news coverage and letters sent home by school … [Read more...] about Social cruelty on Ask.fm & the whack-a-mole tendency

Filed Under: cyberbullying, Parenting, Research, Risk & Safety, Social Media, Youth Tagged With: Am I pretty?, ask.fm, cyberbullying, Formspring, Internet safety, online safety, Parenting, resilience, respect, Social Media, whack-a-mole

Teens’ digital self-abuse: New insight

December 16, 2010 By Anne 5 Comments

A just-published observation by social media researcher danah boyd is important for two reasons I can think of right now: 1) it strongly confirms the importance of adults not reacting too quickly to "cyberbullying" incidents or of not acting without calm communication and investigation, and 2) it starts an important discussion about the online versions of self-destructive behavior. Let's look at … [Read more...] about Teens’ digital self-abuse: New insight

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: danah boyd, digital self-harm, Formspring, online safety, Parenting, self-harm

Formspring: What’s going on around it

May 11, 2010 By Anne 11 Comments

Last week I wrote about what's going on at Formspring. This week: what's going on around it. The problem we, all of us, are dealing with isn't mainly a Web site whose business plan did not include teens using the site for their own purposes, some harmful. I think everyone can agree that the basic problem is the nasty behavior on it. What those of us who grew up in the mass-media era struggle over … [Read more...] about Formspring: What’s going on around it

Filed Under: cyberbullying, Literacy & Citizenship, media shift, Risk & Safety, Social Media Tagged With: Formspring, media shift, social contract, Social Media

Formspring: What’s really going on?

May 6, 2010 By Anne 5 Comments

Nobody's completely sure – even social-media researchers who talk to teens a lot – but it is clear that the Formspring phenomenon didn't come out of nowhere. Remember those personality tests and fashion-sense quizzes in teen magazines? In the digital-age versions, danah boyd writes in DMLcentral.net, teens would – through questions and answers in pre-Web public online spaces like Usenet; "chain … [Read more...] about Formspring: What’s really going on?

Filed Under: bullying, cyberbullying, Parenting, Risk & Safety, School & Tech, school policy, Social Media Tagged With: adolescent development, bullying, cyberbullying, danah boyd, Formspring, identity exploration, quizzes, school policy, Truth or Dare

Principal’s anti-Facebook plan: Is banning Web sites the fix?

May 4, 2010 By Anne 2 Comments

It was an interesting pair of education news stories to break in a single week: a principal urging his students' parents to ban their kids' use of Facebook and the Teacher of the Year being honored for teaching with, among other things, Facebook (see this). In an email to parents, Anthony Orsini, principal of Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgeway, NJ, said that "the main problem is that … [Read more...] about Principal’s anti-Facebook plan: Is banning Web sites the fix?

Filed Under: bullying, cyberbullying, Risk & Safety, School & Tech, school policy Tagged With: Anthony Orsini, bullying, cyberbullying, Facebook, Formspring, Ira Socol, social norms, whole-school

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2016 TEDx Talk on
the heart of digital citizenship

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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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