A few years ago, my wife Amy was selected to serve as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching American and art history in Guangzhou, China (you can read about her experiences in her delightful book, Lessons from China.) While we were there, we had a chance to travel to different parts of the country. As a life-long…
2015-10-19 Teens, Technology, and Suicide: Understanding Causes, Effects, and “Bullycide” from Frederick Lane A Featured Presentation delivered with Joanne Harpel, JD, MPhil, at the 2015 Annual Conference of the New York State School Boards Association on October 19 and October 20, 2015 in New York, NY. If you are interested in discussing a presentation or…
In mid-September, a young couple in Boyds, MD spent part of a sunny fall afternoon posing for photos. Like dozens of other teens and even some professional photographers, they decide to use the railroad tracks running through town as an attractive backdrop. While 16-year-old Natalie Crim and her twin sister Sarah flipped through the photos…
At the end of September, Canadian tech entrepreneurs Julia Cordray and Nicole McCullough announced the pending release of “Peeple,” an app designed to enable users to give one- to five-star ratings to the various people in their lives — basically, “Yelp” for humanity. The reaction to the announcement was, to put it mildly, ferociously negative.…
On April 30, the United States Department of Education released a report entitled “Student Reports of Bullying and Cyber-Bullying: Results From the 2013 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey.” The report contains good news on the cyberbullying front: The percentage of teens ages 12-18 who reported being bullied at school fell to…
Artist supply company Crayola, which recently celebrated its 130th anniversary, is struggling to get impressionable teens to stop using its colored pencils as DIY eyeliner. The trend is yet another example of the “P2P pressure” potential of YouTube. Amateur teen beauticians have posted numerous videos showing how they use cups of hot water to soften…
