When discussing with young people the perils and perks of online activities, it’s sometimes easy to overlook everyone in the equation. Take, for instance, the familiar caution not to post explicit or revealing photos online, or even to avoid sending them on handheld devices to that one intimate person in your life. Dire warnings range [...]

Plenty to catch up on, so without fanfare, let us (ironically) cheer a new buzzword as coined by some anonymous federal bureaucrat somewhere in the U.S. Take a bow, “sextortion”! Okay, facetiousness aside, this is a genuine phenomenon and while both noteworthy and concerning, it’s often difficult to resist mockery when some no-doubt sincere party [...]

This third, loosely-related post will concentrate primarily on the New York Times and its excellent education-focused series on cyberbullying. Some of the impetus for the Times coverage appears to have been the tragic suicide of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince which, while occurring largely in a school environment, also involved elements of cyberbullying (texting and websites are [...]

This story needs a little unravelling, or demystifying, since most reports tend to assume we know the background. What is interesting is how many intriguing aspects of the wider issue it raises. So. Where to begin… A 15-year-old girl from Halifax, Nova Scotia, discovered that someone had created a fake Facebook profile — complete with [...]

First things first: happy birthday, Canada. Now, it seems we can’t ever escape this topic, but a gaggle of recent discussions involving cyberbullying have been begging for our attention. I’ll begin with a study by McAfee/Harris [pdf], which appears to show a decline in online bullying in spite of a sensationalist press release that encouraged negative [...]

So this is what it looks like when observers and pundits kneejerk all over a new study, seemingly at random singling out [insert latest bête noire du jour of your choice -- in this case: social digital media/technology] for blame. What am I talking about? The recent University of Michigan study which has concluded that [...]

We can discuss the finer points of social networking forever, but the larger question does occur: what is the net (pun not intended) effect on young people of increased (and increasing) electronic relationships? As with most things, it seems the jury is still out. We know that teenagers are increasingly using texting as a significant [...]

Merlyn Horton interview on CTV, June 29, 2009 (Courtesy CTV.ca). The popular online classified service Craigslist is a clearing house for all kinds of products from tools to tickets. Now, youth workers and police are sounding the alarm about something else that’s for sale there—teenagers selling their bodies online. Get the Flash Player to see [...]

Two stories on the same website on the same day illustrate something about the Web we all should know by now. First, and very simply, don’t tweet (announce via Twitter) that you’re going out of town… unless you somehow relish having your home broken into (video); and second (returning the focus to youth), if you’re [...]

I might get “lynched” for the pun in the header, but SOLOS and this very Hot Topics blog you’re so intently devouring right now is getting some welcome publicity after The Georgia Straight‘s Tech Blog posted an article today. Thematically, you’ll recognise it as focusing (some would say obsessing) on the same concerns we always [...]