Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among 10 to 24-year-olds. A variety of factors contribute to the intolerable anguish a suicidal student feels, and they may not be able to see the help that is available to them. Parents can play a crucial role by intervening and supporting their child to prevent any more lives lost to suicide.

Understand The Risk Factors

The first step is learning about the risk factors that put children at a greater chance of engaging in suicidal behavior.

• Psychological disorders including depression, anxiety, trauma, and substance abuse are the leading risk factor for suicidal tendencies. About 90% of people who have died by suicide had a psychological disorder
• Previous attempts to complete suicide
• Major life-changing events that can cause high levels of distress (divorce, loss of a loved one, abuse, etc.)
• Bullying/Cyberbullying
• Lack of social support from peers

Know The Signs

It is important to observe your children and be aware of any changes. Noticing these changes will be your opportunity to intervene, open communication and connect your child to professional help.

• Suicide notes
• Direct and indirect threats of suicide expressed verbally and through social media
• Giving away prized possessions
• Changes in appearance and routine (poor hygiene, weight loss or gain, inability to sleep, sleeping more than usual, etc.)
• Changes in social behavior and isolating within the home
• Low mood and loss of interest in activities

What To Do

If you notice any of these changes, do not ignore them. Instead, approach your child and let them know that you are concerned. Here are some tips on how to have this intimidating conversation:

• Remain calm and provide reassurance to your child. Let your child know how much they matter and how much they are loved.
• Do not be afraid to use the word suicide. Be direct in the questions you ask (“Are you thinking about suicide?”).
• Tell your child that you will help them in overcoming their challenges and problems.
• Be open-minded as your child talks to you about their struggles and feelings.
• Most importantly, remove or secure all means of self-harm from the home (firearms, pills, razor blades, etc.). Try not to leave your child alone for extended periods of time.

How To Get Professional Help

• If you think your child is a risk to themselves in any way, go to an emergency room. You can also contact your child’s primary care physician to get a referral for mental health treatment. It may be beneficial for your child to seek therapy through a counselor or therapist.

 

Additional Resources

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1 (800) 273 8255

Text HOME to 741-741 to reach Crisis Text Line

The first day of school is quickly approaching. Adjusting to a new school, teachers, classes, and people can be difficult. It can be easy to feel overwhelmed and vulnerable.

Will I fit in? Will I find my classes? What if I get lost? What if I can’t make any new friends?

Whether your child is starting middle school or high school, it’s common to have the jitters. Here are some things you can do with your child that will support them through this time of transition.

Continue reading →

A History of Content Filtering in Schools                                  

Pornography Filtering & URL List Race

I first began selling web filtering solutions to school IT and Network Administrators in 2004. The CIPA law had recently been passed, so schools were eagerly spending money on filtering appliances to protect their students. The industry was flooded with new companies entering the market, and popular firewalls added web filtering to their UTM lineup.

Back then, schools focused on blocking pornography when selecting a solution. Each vendor pitched that they had more porn sites in their database than other filters, that they blocked the largest number of categories, and that they had better update mechanisms, including “100% human verified” databases. The cat-and-mouse game sales pitch was working well.

Continue reading →

Note: Lightspeed Systems’ VP of Marketing has distributed information about our URL categorization technology to 1000s of districts across US including to many of our customers without allowing us to investigate their claims. In our opinion, this breaks norms in the security industry for Responsible Disclosure, potentially breaks norms around advertising without reasonable substantiation, and also brings to question the very motive behind the approach and its relevance to actually helping student safety. Securly is choosing to keep this discussion focused on facts, technology and student safety. Please read our earlier response from Securly’s co-founder/CRO Bharath Madhusudan on this topic.

In this article, we provide a multi-step technical take on all the information being circulated. With facts and data, we proceed to distill truth from competitive marketing. The article is split into the following sections:

• How does Securly’s URL categorization work?
• Video: Our PageScan technology in action.
• Securly’s take on why the information being circulated lacks scientific rigor, and reasonableness in advertising competitive claims.
• Why did Lightspeed’s tests with PageScan fail?
• How would Securly have fared if Lightspeed had used the PageScan cluster?
• Examining the effectiveness of Securly’s PageScan technology against Alexa’s Adult Category of sites using a scientific experimentation framework.

Continue reading →

Today, Lightspeed Systems issued the results of an internal competitive study that positions Securly’s and another vendor’s products as inferior in enforcing CIPA compliance.

Our initial instinct was to not respond since it was apparent to us how the market generally reacted. Having said that, the amount of concern coming from our customer and prospect base compels us to issue a fact-based response of who Securly is and why we do what we do. I have organized my response into 3 distinct sections:

• What is student safety, really? With the advent of 1:1 programs, does “CIPA Compliance” and “Student Safety” mean the same thing in the year 2018?
• PageScan – The portion of our product that acts as the first line of defense for inappropriate websites.
• The team behind PageScan and Securly. Why we feel qualified to build security products for K-12.

Continue reading →

Children learn about stranger danger from a very young age. We remind them about the importance of their safety whenever they step out of the home. Those same cautions should be applied to the cyber world.

Children are beginning to use the internet at younger ages. They have access to oodles of information at their fingertips and the ability to network instantly across distances. But there are some real risks and safety concerns when it comes to the world wide web.

Continue reading →

Part 1 explored safety concerns and hidden dangers of social apps popular with teens today. But the more we researched, the more risky apps and websites we found. So today we are bringing you Part 2, an investigation into more popular teen apps.   

Continue reading →

On average, teens spend about 9 hours a day using media. With summer break, that number may increase. The apps most popular among teens and tweens may seem harmless; however, there are real safety concerns that parents need to be aware of:

Continue reading →

Summer is just around the corner and you may have already begun planning family vacations and outings. But before they have fun, your kids have to take a little something called final exams [insert scary Halloween-like sounds here].

Continue reading →