Yesterday I talked about a 2008 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 article in its entirety).  The authors identified five key issues in regards to the topic:

identity
privacy
ownership and authorship
credibility
participation

This report worked to provide a balanced perspective on [...]

When parents ignore what’s in front of them, they lose the chance to have meaningful conversations about choice with their teenagers.  Here’s an example (if you’re receiving this via e-mail or RSS, you’ll need to come back to my site to watch the video):

What could the mom or the dad have said here - how [...]

There’s been a huge amount of talk about adolescent sexting recently.  It seems to have suddenly become popular enough - or at least its popularity seems to have sunk into adult awareness enough - to be everywhere all of a sudden.  Parents and interviewers have in the past couple of weeks come out of the [...]

Through a round-about series of events I ended up having a late Saturday night dinner with a lovely woman from a local non-profit who teaches sex and health educators how to teach their content effectively.  We spoke specifically about how - and what - to teach young people about sexual orientation.  It’s gotten me thinking [...]

On Tuesday afternoon I moderated a panel of two teenagers and two parents at SXSW Interactive about how parents and teenagers interact around social media (Facebook, MySpace, etc.).  It was a pretty awesome panel, if I do say so myself.  You can read @shelbyknox’s live tweets along with the full conversation from all attendees.  Here [...]

This morning a fellow teacher who, according to his degrees and professional standing, appears competent to do research, perform statistical analysis of the output, and make balanced statements about populations made such an outrageous statement to me that I am still having a hard time comprehending it.  He said:
“Fat women all hate prostitutes.  The skinny [...]

I had the pleasure of seeing Spring Awakening on Tuesday.  I had never seen it, nor had I read a full plot description.  So while I knew it was one of those things I needed to see, I didn’t have any preconceptions or really any details at all.
What I found in Spring Awakening was a [...]

So here’s my overview from last Thursday and Friday’s conversation on sexting:

Yes, it can be problematic, as can almost any form of communication.
Texting is (currently) a ubiquitous communication method, and it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon, so as parents, teachers, and caring adults, we have to make our peace with it.
Texting about [...]

Yesterday I wrote about sexting, in the original, text-based sense.  Today I get into those terribly troubled waters when teenagers send sexual images - either stills or video - of themselves.
I’m hesitant to write about this topic, which is perhaps telling in and of itself.  I write about a lot of controversial issues [...]

Welcome to summer, time of vacations and summer flings!  I was on vacation in Florida with friends (hence, no post for a stupidly long time).  I ended up talking with the three other adults who I went with about our experiences as teenagers on vacation.  Our experiences ran the gamut - from flings on every [...]