About Our Experts On Teen Safety

PBS Frontline's 'Digital Nation': Presenting our generation with a crucial choice

Seems to me, Gever Tully's Tinkering School would be the perfect antidote for all the concern about kids and digital media expressed in PBS Frontline's "Digital Nation" – hands-on problem-solving, lots of tools, collaborativel...

Cyberbullying & bullying-related suicides: 1 way to help our digital-age kids

How do we help our children maintain some detachment from the drama, sometimes cruelty, of school life? This, I think, is the central question of online safety, if not child development, in the digital age. It has just become national news that 15-year-old Phoebe Prince of South Hadley, Mass., and v...

Study finds kids spend 7.5 hours per day on 'entertainment media'

A new Kaiser Family Foundation study about kids' use of media has some startling implications.

It found that "entertainment media" use among children and teens is up dramatically from five years ago. It also found that about 70 percent of youth say their families have no rules about how m...

State senator wants to criminalize teen sexting

US states are all over the map where sexting legislation is concerned. While Vermont decriminalized sexting by minors, Indiana is considering a law that makes it a juvenile crime. WTHR TV in Indianapolis reports that, in order to send Ind...

Tips for Protecting Personal Privacy Online

A Few Facts:

• 66% of teens on social networking sites use privacy controls on their profiles
• 39% of kids have posted something on their social networking pages that they later regret
• 22% of teen girls have posted nude or revealing photos of themselves

Juvenile predators: New study

Much has been reported (often with hype and inaccuracy) about “pedophiles” or “predators," with people thinking these terms only refer to adults. But a new study released by the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention offers quite a reality check. "It is impo...

No Adults Allowed!

Working with NetSmartz, the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office has empowered children to teach each other about Internet safety. Director of Community Education and Outreach, Cynthia Boyle, shares about their work and what can happen when adults take a step back.

I...

Treating kids on the Web in a new way

I spent part of last week in Washington, D.C., attending a gathering that turned out to be a watershed moment in the 16-year history of online safety education.

The third annual conference of the Family Online Safety Institute brought together about 400 Internet safety advocates around th...

Take Charge of Your iPhone

Kids love iPhones. And with more than a thousand downloadable apps for kids in the iPhone store, you can find something to suit every age and interest. But there are also lots of apps with racy content geared just for adults that you don't want kids stumbling across.

Fortunately, Apple of...

Teenage brain: Fresh perspective

For a long time, most adults have assumed that teens take risks and act impulsively because their brains aren't fully developed. It's the explanation we hear a lot for their "immaturity." And although some very reputable publishers have reported on the "teenage brain" - e.g., ...