Pop-Culture | Posted by Julie Z on 08/4/2010

Formspring and Cyber Bullying

formspring

My first interaction with Formspring (for those who don’t know: Formspring is a site where people can comment anonymously about eachother) occurred just this past year when a girl a year younger than me from a nearby school became relatively famous amongst local high schoolers because of her formspring. Other “anonymous” commenters (mostly girls from her school) began leaving notes implying (in a tone that could be called just about anything besides subtle) that they thought she was a slut. She announced via formspring that she would not be returning to that school next year.

I watched this incident with pretty fervent, yet detached, disgust. Almost every Formspring profile I’ve viewed was used to express hateful comments, some verging on actual threats. It seems that when one adds teens plus anonymity plus the…

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Feminism | Posted by Julie Z on 06/24/2010

Girl Scout and Dr. Phil to Testify at Congressional Hearing on Cyberbullying

Go Dominique and the Girl Scouts of America!

The advent of new media in recent years has been both a blessing and a curse to the youth of the world. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, we can hop on the computer and have a conversation with somebody half way around the world in thirty seconds or less - or more commonly, we can learn that the girl that sits behind us in History who always wears black and scowls actually has an intense love for narwhals and unicrons, by clicking on her photo album “I Love Narwhals and Unicorns.” We’re able to  instantly connect to others in a way no other generation has previously experienced, but we’re also exposed to the darker side of rapid, often anonymous, communication. Cyberbullying, defined…

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Pop-Culture | Posted by Julie Z on 10/27/2009

That’s Not Cool

omgz txting!

It seems to me like our parents, and other various adults, are freaking out about the technology we have available to us today. I’ve always thought that if you’re responsible — you put up all the privacy settings, you don’t talk to strangers, you generally use your brain — technology is actually a positive thing. We have so much information available to us, and I think social networking is healthy, and a good thing for kids to learn how to do. And you don’t hear about 47 year old sexual predators masquerading as 15 year old guys (or girls…) so much anymore. Unless that’s more because it’s not fresh news, rather than it’s not occurring.

But as one of my former teachers recently observed, “Technology is sucking the emotions from…

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Feminism | Posted by Maria on 09/18/2009

Life Without a Life Mate

I’m on a number of social networking sites, and on some of these, there are introduction threads. On one of these, they asked us state our long term goals and I wrote what I considered to be the basics.

- graduate from college
- get a job I don’t hate
- write and publish books
- hold the leaders of the free world hostage and make them listen to Abba
- beat Stephenie Meyer with a hard back copy of Breaking Dawn in a pillow case.

You know, the important stuff. But apparently I missed the memo. The one that says somewhere in the long-term goals section, a girl must list the desire to marry and procreate.

perhaps not

Just to set the record straight, I’m not going to say that the idea of finding a nice guy,…

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