Given the way the media works, we tend to hear a lot of fear based messages about the internet and teens. Fear that they will be contacted by a child predator. Fear that they will see pornography they don’t understand. Fear that they will send a sext into the virtual world that can never be […]
Part of my goal to slow down this summer is to catch up on my reading. Recently, I was introduced to the work of several researchers at Penn State (Wisniewski, Jia, Carroll, Xu & Ronsen). This team of researchers from Penn State are in the College of Information Sciences and Technology and some of their work […]
At the beginning of the month, the Pew Research Center published their most recent report on teens and technology entitled “Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015”. The Pew Research Center always provides great insight into the use of technology by both adults and teenagers. This report, taken from data obtained in the fall of […]
Over the weekend, an article came out in the Daily Mail from the UK discussing children as young as ten who are fighting pornography addiction. While this might have been news for the general public, this is something that is common knowledge in the field of sexual addiction treatment. The age of those addicted to […]
In the process of writing my book, The New Age of Sex Education: How to Talk to your Teen about Cybersex and Pornography, I feel like I have read every scientific study from the past decade on the topics of online pornography, sexting and internet safety. Last night’s reading, a 2011 study on the safe […]
Where there is a will there is a way. This is something often heard in our office. When we are dealing with trying to limit a child’s access to sexual content in the digital world or trying to create barriers for accountability for someone with a sexual addiction, we must always remember this! This is […]
This spring, the app, Yik Yak began to receive a large amount of attention in the news, none of it positive. School officials from Chicago to Georgia have worked to try to ban the app due to its use as a means to cyberbully students. So what is Yik Yak? It is a social media […]
There is a never ending barrage of new apps entering the digital universe every day. It would be a full time job to keep up to date on all of the new offerings. This blog is slowly progressing through those apps that can be used for sexual purposes as well as their official or intended […]
Last month there were several major news stories in New Jersey regarding teen sexting. In two affluent communities in central New Jersey the school administration had to determine how to handle the possession of nude images of classmates by both high school and middle school students (http://www.nj.com/somerset/index.ssf/2014/05/bernards_kids_could_face_child_pornography_charges_for_nude_pics_of_classmates_on_phones.html). In New Jersey (and most other states) the […]
The decision as to whether or not a parent will monitor or filter their child’s internet use is a very personal one. Many parents do not. They may think their child is not doing anything that warrants monitoring. They may think their child is too young to necessitate even thinking about the issue. Additionally, some […]
