Why Most Facebook Users Get More Than They Give

Analyzes data on Facebook user activity, including patterns in sending friend requests, adding content, and "liking" their friends' content; the interconnectedness of friends; and links between the number of friends, Facebook activity, and social support

Data protection, safeguarding and the protection of children's privacy: exploring local authority guidance on parental photography at school events

Should parents be allowed to take photographs at school events? Media reports suggest that increasingly schools are answering no to this question, either prohibiting or imposing stringent restrictions upon such photography. The legal justifications for such restrictions are, however, unclear. Accordingly, in 2013 freedom of information requests were sent to local education authorities across England, Scotland and Wales, the aim being to determine what advice local education authorities provide to schools in relation to parental photography at school events, and to identify how education authorities’ understandings of the law influence the advice they offer. That research reveals that local education authorities’ understandings of the law vary significantly and that where authorities do not fully appreciate the extent of the legal obligations arising this may have significant repercussions for the children concerned

The Trouble with Tinker: An Examination of Student Free Speech Rights in the Digital Age

The boundaries of the schoolyard were once clearly delineated by the physical grounds of the school. In those days, it was relatively easy to determine what sort of student behavior fell within an educator’s purview, and what lay beyond the school’s control. Technological developments have all but erased these confines and extended the boundaries of the school environment somewhat infinitely, as the internet and social media allow students to interact seemingly everywhere and at all times. As these physical boundaries of the schoolyard have disappeared, so too has the certainty with which an educator might supervise a student’s behavior. Because smartphones, tablets, and computers abound, the ways in which students are able to communicate have changed dramatically in the new millennium, but the law governing the free speech rights of students in American public schools has not kept pace. Current law allows educators to punish student speakers when their in-school speech disrupts the school environment, or is likely to do so—but it is not clear that this same standard should apply to student speech that is posted online away from school, or whether a school should be able to punish off-campus online student speech at all. Because the Supreme Court of the United States has not yet spoken on the issue, and in the absence of a better standard, the courts that have addressed the issue of problematic off-campus online student speech have applied this standard that bases a school’s ability to punish the speaker on the (potential) disruptiveness of his or her speech. This Note explores that which the First Amendment guarantees to adult citizens and the ways in which these guarantees differ for public school students in school, as governed by four major Supreme Court decisions in the past fifty years. This Note then examines the recent cases in which courts have applied this precedent to off-campus online student speech for which the speakers were punished by their schools, and analyzes the ways in which the application of the same standard in these cases has led to drastically different outcomes. Ultimately, this Note contends that educators must be able to supervise student online activities to some extent, and proposes a new standard by which a public school would be able to punish a student for his or her off-campus online speech only if that speech was actually of concern to the school, and if that speech interfered with the rights of others in the school community

Data protection: the challenges facing social networking

The popularity of social networking sites has increased dramatically over the past decade. A recent report indicated that thirty-eight percent of online users have a social networking profile. Many of these social networking site users (SNS users) post or provide personal information over the internet every day. According to the latest OfCom study, the average adult SNS user has profiles on 1.6 sites and most check their profiles at least once every other day. However, the recent rise in social networking activity has opened the door to the misuse and abuse of personal information through identity theft, cyber stalking, and undesirable screenings by prospective employers. Behavioral advertising programs have also misused personal information available on social networking sites. Society is now facing an important question: what level of privacy should be expected and required within the social networking environment