Cyberbullying is a raging phenomenon amongst today’s Internet-savvy teens.  With so many venues to attack and insult each other, such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, test messaging... youth receive mean messages all the time.  A recent New York Times feature told several personal stories of young people who had been victims of cyberbullying.  

The Times says, “This is a dark, vicious side of adolescence, enabled and magnified by technology. Yet because so many horrified parents are bewildered by the technology, they think they are helpless to address the problems it engenders.”

Parents are not sure how to tackle this issue, as seen by the comments posted to this article online.  A debate emerges between those parents who advocate for stricter parenting: more restrictions on Internet privileges and harsher punishment for inappropriate actions, versus those who argue that kids will be kids, and that as adults adapt to the technology their kids are using, they will slowly be able to figure out a solution.

Check out some of the comments below:

Elisabeth says...

All of us experimented with bullying at some point in our life... We need patience and understanding. It is just going to be rough sailing, till we get a few generations under out belt, and learn (operative word here)how best to handle computer technology and children. After all, it took 80 years after the car was invented to come up with child seats.

Mary says...

I am a teacher. A number of years ago, I was teaching in a large high school of several thousand students. As I came down the hallway during passing time, I saw a number of students gathered in a circle and heard the chant: "Fight, fight.." I couldn't see who was fighting, so I actually crawled under the legs of the encircled students. Two girls were fighting. I grabbed the girl closest to me, expecting her to turn and resist my efforts to break up the fight. Instead, I felt her relief as she relaxed in my grasp. I saw her eyes-- she was thankful I had stopped the fight.  As much as they may complain, young people want adults to be in charge. When adults let kids run wild, that is exactly what they do -- digitally or otherwise. Many adults leave teenagers to their own devices at precisely the age when they most need adult wisdom and common sense.

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There is no end in sight to the number of social networks that are hatching these days. Yesterday, Youth Radio blogged about Diaspora, a Facebook alternative that boasts better security but uncensored sharing.  

Meanwhile, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has launched Jumo - a social networking site for social activists.  You must have a Facebook account to sign up for a Jumo account.  The idea behind Jumo, is to give social activists a way to raise awareness for their cause.  Once friends and acquaintances are aware of the cause, they have the opportunity to support it, maybe even financially. According to an article in the L.A. Times, Internet fundraising is not as effective as one might think, but maybe sites like Jumo will change that.

With so many new sites on our radar (including Togetherville and CollegeOnly from posts in the months past), we weren't surprised to find that there are researchers studying the social ripple effects of all this networking.

An article in the November - December issue of the Chicago Magazine written by Lydialyle Gibson, examines the link between loneliness and social networking.  Chicago psychologist, John Cacioppo, has studied and written extensively on this topic.  He says on one hand, that social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn have been an asset to people who don’t get to leave the house much because of disability or work. These networks have expanded their communities.

On the other hand, people who substitute face-to-face relationships with online relationships become more depressed and lonely.  Cacioppo participated in a research paper suggesting loneliness is contagious as well.  According to their study, “Having one lonely friend raised one’s chance of loneliness by 40 to 65 percent.  A lonely friend-of-a-friend raised the change by 14 to 36 percent.”

On Facebook, it’s not uncommon for people to have upwards of 500 friends. If just one person’s negative status update can affect that many people, our susceptibility to loneliness is high.

This commentary originally aired on WAMU, American University Radio in Washington, D.C.

By Destiny Jackson

It’s normal for teenage girls to get messages on their Myspace or Facebook pages from guys they don’t know. They say things like, “Hey, you look good.” Or simply, “Wats good?”

I always play it safe and ignore these guys -- I don’t know who they are or what their intent is. But one day last year, my best friend found a stranger’s message waiting on her page and she replied.

They started writing back and forth and she realized he had first written to her because she was cute. When he wrote messages like "Baby, you the one for me," she began to feel he truly cared for her. Pretty soon he wrote, "When are we going to see each other?"

I told my friend I was very suspicious -- how did she know this guy wasn’t a grown man who planned to kidnap her? But she met him anyway, alone. Turned out, he was just another teenager from outside DC.

Still, he worried me.

I worried that while my friend said the relationship was serious, she never introduced him to her parents or friends. I worried that no one knew him or even had a connection to him. On dates, they would meet alone at the movie theater or at his house, in a part of Maryland we didn’t know well. And I worried that this 15-year-old guy only wanted one thing from my 14-year-old friend -- sex.

One day she told me she was going to skip school to go to his house. I told her it was dangerous to sneak off without telling someone exactly where she would be. She didn't listen.

After first period music class, the school alerted my friend’s parents that she hadn’t shown up for class.

Then, about half an hour later, my friend called the school crying. Her boyfriend had hurt her and tried to rape her, she said. And she needed to get away from him. Her mom drove to pick her up and the school called the police.

In the end, he didn’t cause much physical harm -- just a few bruises she got while struggling to escape. Things could have been much worse. I could have lost my best friend that day.

For adults, Internet dating has become more and more normal and probably nothing to worry about. But teens may be putting themselves in danger when they seek romance online. If you’re dating someone you know only through the Internet, be honest with your
parents or another adult you trust. Because as teens, our online communities may be growing every day, but the only space where there is reliable accountability is in our real-life community.

These commentaries by D.C. area teens are part of a collaboration between WAMU's Youth Voices program, Youth Radio and the Latin American Youth Center.

Youth Radio recently wrote about Facebook applications that were leaking personal information to advertising companies.  MySpace is a culprit as well. Even though MySpace forbids ad developers from leaking user data, a MySpace spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal, "It has recently come to our attention that several third-party app developers may have violated these terms and we are taking appropriate action against those developers."

So what does this really mean for Facebook and MySpace users?  Are high school students just as paranoid about their privacy as the media says we should be? 

Youth Radio's Maya Cueva feels strongly that Facebook has done serious damage. "As a teen, I am already an easy target for manipulative ads shown on TV and billboards. Facebook (a site that contains my date of birth, my likes and dislikes, and acts essentially as my virtual avatar) leaking information about its users to advertising companies, marks the end to our right to privacy." 

Cueva predicts that when advertising companies can market more specifically to her demographic, her peers are in danger. "Although I know I am smart enough to not buy into tricky advertisements targeting my demographic—I am not so sure if my peers will be able to avoid ads from companies that have a whole existing file on them. The ads will be even more persuasive since they’ll have enough information to target users individually," she said.

Cueva can tell that ads have been targeting her. She is a senior in high school, and Facebook knows it.  "It scares me to think that when I’m on Facebook and I see an ad on the side for custom-made t-shirts for high school events, that ad is targeted for ME specifically, because the company knows I am a senior in high school," she said.

Recent reports have shown that even if a user sets their privacy filter on the most restrictive option, advertising companies still have access to your information when you use certain apps.  "My profile is set to private for people who are not my friends on Facebook.  I value my privacy, and now that it is being violated—it makes me feel unsafe in the cyberworld.  Although it is true that many Facebook users know a third party may see their information and post it willingly, I think they underestimate how much power a company wields when it knows everything about them," said Cueva. 

Are you a Myspace, Facebook, or Twitter fan? Facebook , in my opinion, is clearly the most dominant website out of all. Facebook is a social networking site which launched in February 2004. It allows users to add and send messages to their friends, update their very own profile, and even join networks based upon workplace and school. This website also allows you to connect with friends, family members, classmates, etc. You can also add information about yourself and upload photos/ videos. This website contains a privacy settings, and especially monitors the profiles of those who are under the age of eighteen. Read more...

Okay, call this an OLD MAN rant if you must, but I think we've all been crunk on "openness" and the "social graph" for so long that we're forgetting the value of a good secret.

Let's take the North Carolina pizza joint who fired a waitress for complaining about a crappy tip on Facebook for example. Now I'm not going to agree with Brixx Pizza's policy of policing their employee's social media pages and taking employment related punitive actions against them. That's just dumb. Employers shouldn't have the right to put their workers under the same scrutiny that, say, a politician deserves.

Yet they do. Moreover, they're going to keep doing it until the social media era is over. Which is to say: never.

So what's a pissed off service industry worker to do? Well you can try practicing your inside voice for a while. I know. It sucks. The whole point of the social networking phenomenon was that we were supposed to be able to speak our minds to who we wanted to and keep everyone else out. Private spaces that were hiding in plain sight. The only problem is that in the "era of free" no one can make any $$$ by helping you keep your secrets. Because you're not paying Facebook, MySpace, and yes, Google to keep your secrets: advertisers are paying them to know everything they can about you.

There are different levels of privacy, everyone who has made it past potty training understands this inherently. Yet it feels like our technology is pushing us towards a binary definition of public/private. At some point the social networking providers are going to learn that we need simple to use controls that help us define our semi-private spaces online, or be crushed by an upstart that "gets it".

Until then we're going to have learn that everything you say online can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion. That while you may have lots of friends online, the Internet itself is not your friend. It's a megaphone, and the wrong people are just as likely to be listening as the right ones.

MySpace Music has agreed to stream Indie Bands in exchange for sharing in the ad revenue with the service. Tunecore will serve as the distribution company for MySpace.

"Artists will simply pay a small flat fee for inclusion in the on-demand MySpace Music streaming service, which is partially owned by major labels. In return, MySpace promises to pay artists a percentage of the money it makes from the ads that accompany the music."

(via Wired)

Tunecore said that by the end of 2009, it projects paying out more than $30 million to independent artists—who have 100 percent ownership of their music. The majority of the money will come from song sales. According to Tunecore, consumers who are listening to streaming music aren't storing it on their own devices—which will then play a big role in artists’ revenue stream.

Previously:

• The End of Mixtapes - Youth Radio
• Alicia Keys Album Release on Facebook
• Up And Coming Rap Artist Killed

Tupac Shakur’s music is still making its rounds -- this time, in church. His classic song “Changes” made it to the Vatican’s official MySpace music playlist. The Vatican wrote on its MySpace page, "The genres are very different from each other, but all these artists share the aim to reach the heart of good minded people." Since Thursday, the song has been played 4.6 million times. "Changes" was #1 in Norway and in The Netherlands. It also reached top 10 charts in several other countries.

"Changes" was nominated for Best Rap Solo Performance at the Grammy Awards of 2000; it remains the only posthumous song to be nominated in this category. the song addresses issues close to 2Pac's era of influence, notably racism, police brutality, drugs, and gang violence.

(via Wikipedia)

The lyrics to this song are amazing and Tupac wasted no time letting listeners know how he felt. Here's his first verse:

For months now the talk of the virtual town has been about teens and Twitter. The he said, she said has gotten out of hand. For every Morgan Stanley intern who claims that teens just plain don't use the micro-blogging service there is a Pew Internet report that puts that assertion to the sword.

The latest twist in the tale shows that Millennials are beginning to turn to Twitter as the median age of Facebook has aged seven years (from 26 to 33) since May of last year. Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb breaks down the Pew report that has the status update king coming in as the second youngest social network to MySpace:

37% of those 18-24 now use Twitter when only 19% did back in December 2008. And in the slightly older 25-34 bracket, a portion of which could still be considered Gen Y, 31% are now using the service compared to only 20% in December of last year. Combined, these two groups account for more than half of Twitter's network. 

Not that Twitter CEO Evan Williams is jumping for joy at the prospect of a user base that is skewing younger. In a recent interview with Fortune magazine the Twitter co-founder implies that he's okay with teens steering clear of his service, since the focus of Twitter isn't social networking anyway: