A couple of weeks ago, students in Palm Beach County went back to school for another year of learning and growth. Soon, Youth Speak Out International will return to afterschool programs to teach elementary school and middle school students how to be better digital citizens. In today’s quickly evolving digital society, these lessons are more important than ever before.  A recent study from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) shows the serious consequences of cyberbullying. […]

When it comes to the digital world and children, teachers, parents, and governments are often focused on the negatives. The potential of the digital world is intimidating to many, and the desire to protect our children can cause a knee-jerk reaction to keep them away. But researchers at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) are among the advocates for a different approach to the relationship between children and the digital world. They consider […]

A new report by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sheds light on the serious consequences of cyberbullying. According to the new study, 9% of young adolescents (average age: 12) reported being a target of cyberbullying. Female and Black participants were more likely to be bullied.  According to the research, young people who experienced cyberbullying were four times more likely to report suicidal thoughts and attempts compared to youth who didn’t experience it. But unlike […]

At Youth Speak Out, we aim to give youth space to share their thoughts and raise their voice. Our programs start conversations about important topics such as cyberbullying, the overuse of technology, and misinformation in the classroom. But we want these conversations to continue in other settings, especially at home.  However, for many parents, conversations around these major topics can be intimidating. Technology and the digital world is constantly changing. Many parents didn’t face the […]

When you think of how today’s young people interact with the digital world, it’s easy to imagine a child clutching their device, their eyes glazed over as they fail to process the video or images that come across their screens. We think of hours wasted in front of a device, when that child could have been doing something creative and new.  But that is an oversimplification of the issue of technology overuse. Of course, regardless […]