In my browsing of the web today I found a great film made by Child Net International  that addresses the issue of cyberbullying. The film follows a teen boy as he finds himself the target of bullying.  It’s something all parents should watch in order to gain a better understanding of how these things happen and what effect it has on teens.  I think it’s easy for adults to sometimes brush off the idea of cyberbullying because it was never a part of their adolescence.  I mean it does make sense that being bullied through text message or online chat would seem less threatening than getting physically beat up for your lunch money.  However, the issue with cyberbullying is that it’s impossible to escape from because you never know where it will show up.  It’s not as easy as avoiding a certain group of kids while at school or walking a different way home. Cyberbullying allows you to be harassed through instant messaging, threatened through e-mail and humiliated on myspace.  It is everywhere and with the far reach of the internet, a humiliating photo could be e-mailed to everyone in your school or posted on myspace for the whole world to see.  For teens, this can create the feeling that their world is over and they can’t handle it.  That’s why we’ve seen so many tragic cases of suicide related to cyberbullying cases.  To find out more about cyberbullying and for some tips on how to prevent and address it you can visit articles here and here. Also, you can watch the film below or HERE. 

 

 

Libraries adding video games. The American Library Association has announced a new project funded with a $1 million grant from the Verizon Foundation, the charitable branch of Verizon Communications. The project will place video gaming systems like XBOX 360’s and Wii’s in public libraries and will then will be studied to see how video gaming affects the literacy skills of young people. This is an interesting way for libraries to adapt to the changing interests of today’s youth in order to remain relevant. Read the full story here…

Summer camps place cell phones, electronics on hold. In our ultra-connected world, young campers are learning to be without their Ipod’s, cell phones, and video games. Read the full story…

Movie Studios Agree To Help Discourage Teen Smoking. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says teenagers are twice as likely to pick up the habit if they see cigarette smoking in movies, on television, or in cigarette ads. Also, tobacco companies use menthol flavor to get young people to smoke, says a new study to be published in the American Journal of Public Health. To combat this glamorization of smoking motion picture studios will be placing commercials discouraging smoking on DVD copies of films that depict characters smoking. Read the full story…

Gossip girl goes too far again. As an inappropriate follow-up to April’s edgy marketing of WB’s Gossip GIrl series (picture at left), the network has once again pushed the envelope. The series seems to be capitalizing on the criticism it has received from parent groups that have taken issue with the series’ sex and drug riddled plots involving teens. Click here to see the current marketing images…

VA School may “Go Green” and implement a 4-day school week. Read the story here...

Teens listening to more FM Radio. After a 2007 study suggested that most teens are listneing to less radio than they had in the past, a new study has stated that teens report increasing radio listening this year. While the reason for this is unknown I would speculate that young people find it easier to flip on a radio rather than constantly be flipping through songs on an Ipod. Additionally, in our connected world, listening to the radio creates a greater feeling of being linked with the outside world than an MP3 player. Read the story here…

Textbooks going electronic. With McGraw-Hill reporting that they will be offering 95% of their textbooks in electronic versions, Amazon is looking to capitalize with their new e-reader Kindle. Imagine a world where a college student can have all of their textbooks easily accessible in a device the size of a notebook. No more lugging around heavy backpacks! It reminds me of the moment I bought my first Ipod and realized I could hold my entire music collection in the palm of my hand. The one drawback is that I guess it would be hard to sell your used textbooks. Read the full story…

“Playground for pedophiles”. A new teen dating site called MyLOL.net is receiving criticism that it will become a “playground for pedophiles”. With

19,000 worldwide members (150 of which are males over 40) the site has become the top teen dating site on the net. Read the full story here. / View video here.

In This User-Generated World, Teen Girls Prefer Expert Content. Even though this is a generation that loves to create content, teen girls seem to still prefer to receive information from experts found in magazines rather than from friends’ blogs. Read the full story…

The Nokia Lolitas: A combustible mix of minors, sex and technology

It’s a sultry early Friday night in downtown Fairfield and a pod of teenagers has converged at the local 7-11 for the free Slurpees being given away in celebration of July 11, aka 7/11. The teens are armed with all the tech you’d expect from suburban kids of some means, raised in the age of cell phones and the Internet. Instead of riding Razor Scooters, they’re talking on Razr V3 fully-loaded phones and listening to tunes on their iPods. As the new tech has taken hold, it’s been accompanied by a spike in amateur, do-it-yourself exhibitionism. It’s a sexual revolution that’s trickling down to teens, who are experimenting with sexuality in a way that’s more public than ever before. Read the full story… 

Studies Suggest, But Don’t Confirm, Bullying-Suicide Connection 

Researchers have repeatedly found signs of an apparent connection between bullying and suicide in children, according to a new review of studies from 13 countries. Nevertheless, there is no definitive evidence that bullying makes kids more likely to kill themselves.  Still, “once we see that there’s an association, we can act on it and try to prevent it,” said review lead author Dr. Young-Shin Kim, an assistant professor at Yale University School of Medicine’s Child Study Center.  According to international studies, bullying is common and affects anywhere from 9 percent to 54 percent of children. In the United States, many have blamed bullying for spurring acts of violence, including the Columbine High School massacre. Read the full story…

Cyberbullying grows bigger and meaner with photos, video 

Ricky Alatorre doesn’t know which classmate surreptitiously hoisted a cellphone camera and snapped his picture or exactly when it happened. All Ricky, 16, knows is the fuzzy yet distinguishable portrait of him in English class showed up on MySpace, on a page that claimed to be his. And the fake profile, titled “The Rictionary,” not only identified his school but also said Ricky loved dictionaries — a swipe at his school smarts — and was gay (he’s not), one of the most common schoolyard taunts. Read the full story…

Disney bucks music industry downturn 

While many music industry executives are crying in their soup, Walt Disney Music Group’s Damon Whiteside is singing “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” Whiteside, senior vice president of marketing of Walt Disney Records, saw a whopping 60 percent rise in music sales from 2006 to 2007 because of the tween and young-teen music craze led by Disney star Miley Cyrus. Meanwhile, overall music industry sales were down 17 percent in the same period because of digital downloads and pirated music online. “It’s thanks to the tween and younger teens that the music business is staying alive,” Whiteside said here at the YPulse 2008 National Mashup, a two-day conference about teens and technology. Read the full story…

Teen Pregnancy: Why the U.S. Lags Behind Europe 

Of all the industrialized countries in the world, the U.S. has, by far, the highest instance of teenage pregnancies with a rate that more than doubles the nearest competitors.  After posting on the topic earlier this week, I did some further research and came up with some common sense answers as to why this is.  One of the best sources I found was Advocates for Youth.  Each summer since in 1998, Advocates for Youth and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte sponsor annual study tours to France, Germany, and the Netherlands to explore why adolescent sexual health outcomes are so much more positive in the three European countries than in the U.S.  The following italicized bulleted points are from their most recent findings.  Here I will go point and counter point with what the Europeans do successfully and our U.S. reality—buckle up! Read the full story… 

Cell phone is mom-avoidance device for teens

Tweens and teens are pushing parents to adopt text messaging so they don’t have to talk “live” over the cell phone, according to mobile phone executives. A typical teenager carrying a cell phone might let mom’s call roll over to voicemail and then immediately text her back, “What going on?,” according to Stephen Saiz, manager of consumer insight and strategy of the Walt Disney Internet Group’s North American mobile division. “Teens are pushing their parents to go on mobile because they don’t really want to communicate with them directly,” Saiz said here on a panel of mobile executives at the YPulse 2008 National Mashup, a two-day conference on teens and technology. He said later in an interview that his Disney division researches teens’ and parents’ behavior on the cell phone and with its mobile applications. The majority of older audiences using Disney mobile applications skew to mothers who are goaded there by their kids, he said. And most tweens and teens prefer to text message and instant chat with parents and friends rather than talk directly so that they can continue doing other things like play video games with friends, he said. Read the full story…

DVD Piracy On Rise; Young Men Leading Culprits

Despite the growth of new high-definition Blu-Ray DVD technology, old-fashion standard-definition DVD piracy continues to climb. According to one media consultant/researcher, Futuresource Consulting, about one-third DVD users have admitted to making copies of pre-recorded DVDs in the last six months, including many big blockbusters. A majority of the recording is coming from young men, ages 18-24. This activity is up from about 25% in 2007.
The company says if DVD users were unable to make copies, just about two-thirds would have made some of these DVD purchases. But those respondents added that they would buy those titles only if they were on sale or at a promotional price. Read the full story…

Foreclosures’ financial strains take toll on kids 

Millions of young people have become the largely overlooked victims of a real estate crisis that’s led to record foreclosures, sinking home prices and rising numbers of families straining to pay mortgage bills as adjustable-rate loans grow more costly and home equity shrinks. Children and teenagers are enduring a variety of consequences — forced to move and say goodbye to friends, leaving behind schools and teachers, and losing the ability to take family vacations or take part in summer camps because of the financial strain. Some are giving away family pets or suddenly finding themselves in charge of babysitting siblings because parents can no longer afford child care. In the most drastic cases, some wind up living with relatives or even in temporary shelters for the homeless. Read the full story…

Generation Y’s unique challenge 

Two weeks from now, product designer Dav-id Seymour will board a plane to Pakistan to begin an eight-month tour of Asia.  Seymour, 25, graduated in 2006 and has been working in design for a manufacturing company since then, but now he feels ready to broaden his horizons. His plan is to travel overland through India, China, Laos and Vietnam before flying on to Australia, where he will spend a year working freelance.  After that he will move on to South America for more travelling and then perhaps to North America before he considers his options for a permanent job.  “I think my generation feel freer to follow our own paths,” he said. “There are so many options open to us. It’s a cliché, but you only live once. You have to find a job you love, and experience as much of life as you can.”  Seymour’s views are typical of a group researchers call Generation Y – of those born after 1980 who have grown up in the information age. Several studies have been carried out into the characteristics of this group and now, as they begin to dominate the graduate-jobs market, recruiters are striving to understand what motivates them. Read the full story…

What teens want 

What do teens want? Tech, tech and more tech. From the latest mobile phone and game system to a new Apple i-something and a virtual apartment, technology increasingly defines the lifestyles of teenagers, say marketing experts and company executives. That was the main theme of the “What Teens Want” conference in Manhattan last month, as advertisers sought insights into a tech-savvy and globally connected generation that is remaking the image of the typical consumer. Read full story…

Psst! Rumor has it gossip websites hit home
Thanks to the internet, it has never been easier to dish on your friends, neighbors and co-workers. Taking a cue from popular celebrity gossip blogs, a growing number of websites are offering a place for anonymous users to post stories, gossip and rumors about average people. “This is the new-wave form of media,” said Nik Richie, the blogger behind TheDirty.com, a national gossip site with a New Jersey section. “People want to know about their neighbors. They don’t want to hear about Britney Spears.” While neighborhood gossip sites have been gaining readers, they also are drawing the attention of lawmakers and legal experts who are scrambling for ways to shut them down. Most critics object to the sites allowing their users to remain anonymous as they post malicious stories and photos of others by name. Earlier this year, New Jersey’s attorney general subpoenaed the owners of JuicyCampus.com, a popular college gossip site that features posts like “Sluttiest girl on campus” and “Who’s in the closet.” Read full story…

New York Times: Forget Gossip, Girl; the Buzz Is About the Clothes 

Since its debut last fall, “Gossip Girl” has always been more than a television series about its overt subject, the social machinations of Manhattan private-school students.It has also presented a cavalcade of fashion, its primary viewership of teenagers and young women tuning in not only for the plots, but also to render judgment on the clothes. The extravagant wardrobes of the stars — a clash of piped blazers, tiny kilts, dueling plaids and festoons of jewelry — have inspired countless posts on fan Web sites, and magazine features about the female leads. Read the full story…

Other Headlines: 

• Behind the Viral Video: What’s Fake, What’s Real
  
• Youth without youthful pretensions: Teens and the Movies
• Yearbook’s fake names target black students at Charter Oak High
  

Health Alert: Teen teeth whitening

The desire for whiter, brighter teeth is trickling down to teens and even younger. Kids across the country are bleaching their pearly whites, often without their parents knowledge. But there are some things you can do to help them avoid tooth trouble. Girls and boys alike, from elementary to high school, are white hot about bleaching their teeth.
Dr. David Carroll, a dentist, said, “Kids are under a lot of pressure, as adults are, to look and to feel to look good, to have white teeth.” Read the full story…

NBC10.com: Experts Say Teen Drivers Want Parents’ Help

New research was made public on Tuesday about teenage drivers and what parents could do to keep their kids safe.
The information comes just a day after a 16-year-old driver, who had his junior license for just six days, lost control of his SUV, killing himself and a 16-year-old passenger. Dr. Dennis Durbin from Children’s Hospital, has analyzed how and why new drivers wind up injured or in fatal accidents. “Literally overnight, teens go from their lowest to their highest lifetime risk of getting in a fatal crash the day they get their license,” he said. “They get that license and I think a lot of people think that’s a license that shows that they can drive. But it’s really not — it just showed that they passed a test that allows them to get on the road.”  Read the full story…

Metroactive: Generation Debt. 

He was your typical college kid who was persuaded to sign up for his first credit card, right there on the San Jose State campus. It didn’t take long for Rance Bobo to max out that card when he bought a bike. After that, he signed up for a few more cards, using them to buy clothes and stuff for school. The debt started catching up to him, so he decided to take out student loans to pay it off and help make ends meet. By the time Bobo left college, he was $20,000 in the hole. That didn’t stop him from taking out another 20 grand for a car loan. More than a decade later, Bobo, now 30, is still chipping away at his $30,000 tab. Even if he is saddled with debt, with no end in sight, Bobo’s not losing any sleep over it. He finds it hard to save money, often tempted to spend it on nice clothes and the latest technology. He describes his penchant for living beyond his means as a mark of his generation, one made up of folks who will drop $4 on a coffee drink without a second thought, and pride themselves on having the latest gadget in hand. Read the full story…

Through a Teacher’s Eyes: Schools, culture sending the wrong message on teen pregnancy. 

“Carol get hooked up” was the subject of an email I received this morning from “urbangiftcardonus@….” Associating it with Urban Outfitters in Cambridge, I opened it. I should have known better. It was a “gift” card offer from FabFlyGear.com, selling clothing by Sean “Diddy” Combs, 50 Cent, Jay-Z, and Eminem. Frankly, if my mind were not on writing this column in response to the Gloucester High School pregnancy debacle, I would have simply put it in the trash. However, since I have visited Urban Outfitters from time to time, mostly out of curiosity, I decided there might be something on sale there that could help me shape an argument to explain what needs to be done if we are to save nearly an entire generation of youngsters from dissolution. Read the full column…

Business Week: What Do Teens Want? 

Nearly 59,000 captive teens might seem like every parent’s worst nightmare. But for Helsinki (Finland)-based Sulake, such a group provided a pain-free way to gain valuable insight into what “kids these days” really care about. Pain-free because Sulake runs Habbo, the nine-year-old virtual world that as of early June had some 100 million avatars, 9.5 million of them active on the site each month. And because Sulake could use the world as a platform to question the teens—virtually. Habbo’s second Global Youth Survey features the results of a two-month-long poll conducted at the end of last year, which surveyed 58,486 teens in 31 countries. The findings were recently published in a 255-page report targeted at companies looking to market to the lucrative demographic. Read the full story…

Teens and cell cams: Striking a pose? 

Many families preserve history through photos. Often, a trip to grandma’s would seem incomplete without a trip down memory lane via the big book of pictures.  These days, electronic media dominates everything from the way we listen to music, communicate and save images. Almost every cell phone has a built-in camera, which has some parents concerned – for good reason.  According to a recent report by the Associated Press, more and more teens are taking inappropriate photos of themselves, often wearing little or no clothing, and sending them to prospective boyfriends or girlfriends. More worrisome, these photos, once on the Internet, are accessible to practically anyone.  Read the full story…

Hollywood Urged To To Rid Child Movies Of Smoking 

It’s been one year since the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) pledged to make the movies that children see smokefree. But nothing has been done to put that pledge into practice. “One year later, we are still waiting for Hollywood to do the right thing,” state Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines, M.D., said today. “The MPAA must act now to protect children from the harmful influence of movie stars smoking gratuitously on film. We cannot sacrifice the health of another generation through indifference and inaction.” Read the full story…

Study: Teens dropping rags, radio for web, games, and TV 

A new study reminds us of a trend we’d rather not think too much about: teens and “tweens” are reading less, instead spending more time surfing the web, playing games, and watching TV. More teens than ever sharing—and restricting—content online. The Tween & Teen Lifestyle Report is conducted twice a year (spring and fall), with the most recent study carried out in March 2008 (the results were just published). This time around, 1,182 teens (ages 13 to 17) and tweens (ages 8 to 12) were interviewed in-person, and the results confirm a continuing three-year trend of kids putting down the magazines and books, and picking up the mouse, controller, and remote. Read the full story…

Reuters UK: Cellfire aiming coupons at teens 

Mobile coupon provider Cellfire is looking to expand its advertising customer base to include teen retailers and consumer product makers, its chief executive said on Wednesday. Cellfire users receive coupons and discounts on their cell phones from such companies as Hardee’s, Domino’s Pizza Inc, McDonald’s Corp, 1-800-Flowers.com Inc and Peet’s Coffee & Tea Inc. Speaking at the Reuters Consumer and Retail Summit, CEO Brent Dusing said retailers and others who market to teenagers are looking for new ways to reach customers. “If you want to reach them (teenagers) with a promotion, it’s very difficult to reach them in the paper world, of course, because your customer demographics are not reading the newspaper. They’re not checking the mail at home, and they’re probably not going to online coupon sites,” he said. “But they are on the phone, all the time.” Read the full story…

USA Today: Lack of vitamin D rampant in infants, teens 

Giving your children all they need to grow big and strong may not be as simple as a gummy vitamin and three square meals. They still may be susceptible to an epidemic that’s starting to gain the notice of pediatricians and bone doctors across the country: vitamin D deficiency. Mike Stone joined a growing legion of children diagnosed with the condition when an X-ray of his 14-year-old bones revealed a skeleton so thin it appeared clear on film. Read the full story…

Information Week: Today’s Teens: Breakin’ The Law, Breakin’ The Law

Kids these days, I tell ya. Turns out most teenagers could care less about the law when it comes to driving and cell phone use. In fact, a recent study shows that in North Carolina, teen use of cell phones while driving has increased since laws preventing it were enacted. How is it they are failing to get the message? Read the full story…

 
CBS News: Self-Cutting Linked To Risky Teen Sex 

Teens who are frequent self-cutters are also more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors and have a greater HIV risk than teens receiving psychiatric treatment who have cut just a few times, new research suggests. The findings identify habitual cutting behavior as an important risk factor for sexual risk, even in already high-risk teens, researcher Larry K. Brown, M.D., tells WebMD. In 2005, Brown and colleagues from the Bradley Hasbro Children’s Research Center in Providence, R.I., first reported the link between self-cutting and sexual risk taking in a study involving close to 300 teens undergoing intensive psychiatric treatment. Read the full story…

Minneapolis Star Tribune: Dads create clean Christian version of MySpace

About a year ago, Randall Brown started looking for a safe place for kids to hang out. Online, that is. He found out the hard way that MySpace isn’t just for finding friends, networking or listening to cool bands. Companies have hacked into MySpace and spam-slammed it with porn ads and other advertisements. He also looked at Facebook. Although that site has had better luck filtering out porn and ads, there are still teens being teens, posting comments, graphics and applications that might be offensive.  Read the full story…

Wall Street Journal: What the Dating Rules You Set For Your Kids Say About You.

Researchers have known for a while that closeness to parents is linked to less risky sexual behavior by teenagers.  Now, they’re turning their microscopes on the dating rules parents set, with some surprising results: The limits you place on your teenager’s dating may say more about your own love life than your teen’s needs. Also, parents’ satisfaction with their own life roles shapes the kind of rules they set.
Read the full story… 

PC Magazine: Keep Your Kids Safe on MySpace. 

As the parent of a teen, I’m coming to the slow and somewhat unpleasant realization that I may have misjudged MySpace. I’m not saying that I have any higher opinion of the social-networking environment than before, but I’m not so sure it’s going anywhere anytime soon. How could something that’s so perfect a reflection of the teenage psyche ever disappear?  The teen mind, as best as I can discern from the teens I know (and vague recollections of my own teenage years), is an ever-shifting miasma of emotion, pain, euphoria, sexual interest, and a measurement of one’s social status. That’s also a pitch-perfect description of most MySpace pages. They’re confused, muddled, and urgent. If you could shake the contents of a teenage mind out onto a page, I imagine that these pages are exactly what you’d find.

Read the full story… 

Science Daily:  Warning For Teens: Teeth And Jewelry Don’t Mix 

Skin piercings might be the rage among teens, but researchers from Tel Aviv University have found good reasons to think twice about piercing one’s tongue or lip.  Dr. Liran Levin, a dentist from the Department of Oral Rehabilitation, School of Dental Medicine at Tel Aviv University has found that about 15 to 20 percent of teens with oral piercings are at high risk for both tooth fractures and gum disease. Resulting tooth fractures as well as periodontal problems, he says, can lead to anterior (front) tooth loss later in life.

Read the full story… 

L.A. Times: ‘The Baby Borrowers’ 

From “Kids Say the Darndest Things” to “Supernanny” and “Living Lohan,” the antics of other people’s children, and by extension, the flaws of other people’s parenting, offer seemingly limitless entertainment value.  So “The Baby Borrowers,” which premieres tonight on NBC, seems somewhat inevitable. Based on a British show of similar construct, it installs five teenage couples who think they’re ready for marriage and children in a suburban cul-de-sac and hands them a succession of people to care for — infants, toddlers, tweens, teens and finally, aged parental types, with their pillboxes and physical limitations. (Not to worry, the real parents are just a few houses away, monitoring via video and able to intervene if they feel things get out of hand.)
Read the full review… 

Newsday.com: Summer season can be dangerous, deadly for teenagers 

With school ending, students ease into the lazy-hazy rhythms of summer. But it’s also a time of heightened danger that can end in the glaring lights of hospital emergency rooms - or worse. Over the weekend, a Port Jefferson teen was shot to death. In Oyster Bay Cove, an 18-year-old girl was struck and killed by a car. And in Seaford, a mother and father found their teenage daughter dead at a friend’s home after she failed to come home from a party. Teenagers face increased perils this time of year, many experts say. 
Read the full story… 

Canadian study says Facebook violates privacy.

The university’s Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) is asking the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to investigate what it considers to be Facebook’s violations of Canadian privacy law.

Facebook’s policies – from sign-up requirements and advertising policies to third party applications and mobile access – represent 22 privacy violations, according to CIPPIC.

 Read the full news story…

Wall Street Journal: A film with underage fans faces marketing chalenges.

Federal prosecutors have charged a Missouri woman over a MySpace hoax they say led to the suicide of a 13-year-old girl who believed she’d been jilted by a cyber Romeo.
Lori Drew, 49, of O’Fallon, Mo., was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on a charge of conspiracy and three counts of a computer crime and accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information used to inflict emotional distress.

Read the full story…