I’ve been pondering virginity again recently. A couple of things have come up, directing my attention there.
First, I was contacted not once, but twice within the same week by authors of new books on virginity, asking me to review their books (reviews are in coming posts - this is a multi-post issue if I ever [...]
Archives for adolescent development
The virignity issue
I might have saved someone’s life today. So can you.
But the thing is, you might not ever know it.
Young people kill themselves because of harassment, torment, bullying, and immense internal pain. You can be the person who stands between them and suicide, but you might never know it. Ideally, none of us would ever know because the someone we’ve influenced has a happy life, [...]
Why Middle School comprehensive sex ed?
Most middle school students are not yet sexually active. Many of them are not even on the skinny end of the sexually active bell curve (that is, they don’t have boyfriends or girlfriends yet, they haven’t had a first kiss, they might not have even started their periods or had their [...]
Those pesky personal questions
There is an article in yesterday’s NYTimes called Q. Did you ever smoke pot? A. It’s Complicated, that is far better than I feared. It’s about whether or not to tell a preteen or teenager about one’s own drug use - either as a doctor or as a parent. Many of the same issues and [...]
Nudity
I recently read Live Nude Girl: my life as an object by Kathleen Rooney. The book chronicles Rooney’s experiences in being a live nude model, discusses the history of nude modeling, and delves into the psychology of nudity in general. I quite enjoyed the book.
What I felt was missing completely, and quite a glaring oversight [...]
Internet Issues - Conclusions
Over the last two weeks I’ve been talking about a pretty fabulous report from the Harvard Graduate School of Education about the potential ethical issues many teenagers face when interacting online and in social media - and the benefits and pitfalls associated with the issues. This report is one of the best academic reviews of [...]
Internet Issues and Participation
Today I continue our conversation on how the ethical issues that present themselves to young people using social media by talking about participation. The start of our conversation is here, and links to the other posts on the same topic are all in the comments section below.
The Harvard Graduate School of Education report defines participation [...]
Internet Issues and Credibility
I am still writing about the Harvard Graduate School of Education report on young people, ethics, and social media. My series started with an introduction, and I have so far delved into the topics of identity, privacy, and ownership/authorship. I am boiling down the report to a quicker read for those who don’t want to [...]
Internet Issues and Ownership/Authorship
Busy, busy day today, folks, so if you want background on today’s post, go look at yesterday’s post.
The report that I’ve been talking about presents the complex issue of ownership and authorship thusly:
Offline, ownership and authorship are well-define concepts, protected by law and reinforced by cultural norms in corporations and schools… For various reasons, online, [...]
Internet Issues and Privacy
On Monday I introduced a report from the Harvard Graduate School of Education called Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media (go to Monday’s post to download the report in its entirety). The authors contend that there are five primary issues to address and investigate at the intersection of these three forces:
identity (which I [...]
