In August, International Data Corporation (IDC) predicted that 1.44 billion smartphones would be shipped in 2015, a 10.4% increase over the preceding year. It is a safe bet that a hefty percentage of those smartphones will be tucked under a Christmas tree a week from now. Thousands upon thousands of teens (and even younger children)…
In mid-October, I had the pleasure of presenting at the New York State School Boards Association with Joanne Harpel on the topic “Teens, Technology, and Suicide: Understanding Causes, Effects, and ‘Bullycide.’” In the coming year, we will be working to bring this presentation to school districts throughout the tri-state region and beyond. After fifteen years…
Parents love to complain about how much more challenging it is for them to parent than it was for THEIR parents, or frankly, any preceding generation in human history. But you have to feel some sympathy for the parents of millennials (let alone those dealing with the Generation Zers). As Steve Jobs said in 2007…
A 13-year-old girl in Dallas, TX is facing a third-degree felony charge for posting a shooting threat on Instagram. Officials at the T.W. Browne School in southwest Dallas were told last Monday night that someone had posted a photo to Instagram of man pointing a gun straight at a camera, with the following grim caption:…
Sadly, five people have died during 2015 while taking photos or selfies on active railroad tracks. Those deaths are a disturbing sliver of a growing phenomenon known as “death by selfie.” This has become a large enough issue to merit its own Wikipedia page; the debate over whether more people have died in 2015 from…
A short time ago, I wrote a blog post about the need to reframe the discussion over the involunatary capture and distribution of intimate images (colloquially described as “revenge porn”) so as to better capture its true nature: “electronic sexual assault.” One of the concerns that I expressed in that post is that the terminology…
Three weeks ago, Revere High School senior Caley Godino, the captain of the school’s cheerleading squad, received a tweet from her Civics teacher. The day before, the teacher’s tweet said, the turnout for the Revere city election was a shockingly low ten percent; what did the students think about that? Godino responded before school on…
Given the growing importance of technology in our world, it shouldn’t come as a surprise when the cyber- prefix invades another academic discipline. And yet, as I researched this blog post this morning, I was a little startled to realize just how long psychologists have been working the field of cyberpsychology. For the uninitiated, cyberpsychology…
The annual conference of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) is being held in Washington, DC this week, and as usual, it is has been an energizing and thought-provoking experience. FOSI Founder and CEO Steven Balkam and his staff do a terrific job of putting together a compelling slate of presentations on some of the…
2015-11-03 Teaching Digital Citizenship to Digital Natives from Frederick Lane A Featured Presentation delivered at the Schools of the Future Conference in Honolulu, HI on November 3 and 4, 2015. If you are interested in discussing a presentation or professional development program for your organization on this topic, please contact me for information regarding my…
