Over the past two weeks, the media has focused its attention on the recent bullying-related suicides of Tyler Clementi, a young violinist attending Rutgers University, and Asher Brown, a 13-year-old from Houston, TX. 

These tragedies remind us of the fact that youth around the world are being unnecessarily harassed, tormented, targeted and abused through especially cruel words, actions, blogs, videos and photos meant to embarrass, demean, exclude and hurt, and bullies today have the benefit of technology to virally spread their harmful messages.

In the online world, many of our kids lack the positive role models, parental support and guidance, and boundaries that they have in the offline world, creating new and strained rules of virtual world norms that make being a bully or being bullied far more efficient.  We need to honor these teenagers, and take advantage of Tragedy's teachable moment by working together to create a more supportive, safe and ethical community, both online and offline.

Parents, educators and other adults are the first line of defense.  Unfortunately, many parents think their children are immune to this and other online dangers, but we know that one out of four kids are being bullied, nine out of ten LGBT kids are bullied, and as many as 42% of children are being bullied online.  We shouldn't have to wait until one of them takes their own life to be driven to action as responsible adults; an added tragedy is if we don't learn from this and wake up to the reality of these dangers and our role in prevention.

We developed out Internet Safety 101 Program to educate, equip and empower parents, educators and other caring adults with the knowledge and resources they need to protect their children from threats like cyberbullying, pornography, Internet predators, and dangers relating to online gaming, social networking and mobile devices.

Today, we have launched our Cyberbullying 101 video, featured in our Internet Safety 101 program, on our YouTube site.  I hope that you will view and share this important resource as we stand up for our children and say Enough Is Enough!

For the sake of the children,