Major risk factors: Bullying and Cyberbullying Bullying and cyberbullying can profoundly effect a young person’s health and are major risk factors for suicide which is ranked among the top ten causes of death in Western countries. Australia has one of the highest rates of suicide among adolescents in developed countries and it is one of […]
Think about social media and how easy it is to manipulate images (for example, there’s apps that fix skin blemishes, brightens eyes and thins down the face). Add to this a few ‘likes’ from encouraging friends and a teen’s reality is now an illusion. Social theorist Baudrillard called this phenomenon a ‘simulcra’. Here’s an example: […]
I think one of the things that needs to be discussed is: What is considered ‘sex’ today? Back in my day, everything except kissing was lumped into the ‘sex’ basket. Yet, today it’s not. The only thing in the ‘sex’ basket is the penis in the vagina. In many cases, anal sex between a heterosexual […]
There’s been an increase in ‘king hits’ or ‘coward punches’ in the last few years. Do a search of ‘King hits’ into YouTube and there’s 45,600,000 results with titles such as, “The Best king hit EVER!!” and “Top 10 King hits”, which means some people are not seeing this behaviour as violent, but rather as […]
The anonymity of the internet allows teen users to try on multiple roles and experiment with their identity without the perceived or real negative evaluations of others. Research in 2005 showed 24% of teens polled admitted to pretending to be different people online, which can be both positive and negative. On the one hand, a […]
Being a parent is arguably one of the most difficult jobs you’ll ever do, but it can also be the most rewarding. The first thing I’d like you to do is think about the social pressures you had as a teen. Yes, there was bullying, but it by and large stopped at the school gate […]