The New York Times puts parents on notice of an Interent threat to their kids: other kids.
Amy Harmon writes (excerpt):
“We’re always talking about protecting kids on the Internet from adults and bad people,” said Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety.org, a nonprofit group that has been fielding a growing number of calls from parents and school administrators worried about bullying. “We forget that we sometimes need to protect kids from kids.”
For many teenagers, online harassment has become a part of everyday life. But schools, which tend to focus on problems that arise on their property, and parents, who tend to assume that their children know better than they do when it comes to computers, have long overlooked it. Only recently has it become pervasive enough that even the adults have started paying attention.
Great article. Here is another resource for understanding teenage usage:
Pew Internet & American Life Project
“Teenage Life Online: The rise of the instant-message generation and the Internet’s impact on friendships and family relationships”