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The explosive growth of social media, smartphones and digital devices is transforming our kids' lives, in school and at home. Research tells us that even the youngest of our children are migrating online, using tablets and smartphones, downloading apps.

All adults know that the teen years are a critical time for identity exploration and experimentation. Yet this important developmental phase can be dramatically twisted when that identity experimentation, however personal and private, appears permanently on one's digital record for all to see.

Howard Gardner, a professor and researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who developed the concept of multiple intelligences, calls kids' use of digital media and technology "epochal change." He compares the revolution in digital media to the invention of the printing press because of its extraordinary impact on the way we communicate, share information and interact with one another. As a society, we have no choice but to engage with this new reality and work to ensure that it affects our kids in healthy, responsible ways.

It is too late to establish distance. To end cyberbullying, we must use the closeness we’ve allowed to breed to our advantage. We must teach them that if one is a cowardly, bullying, rage-baiter online – no matter how many laughs had or page views generated or ad space sold – then one is a bully off-screen, too.

Both the older set of digital natives and the generation above us assume that the Internet is a bubble – a space with limits

Rage-baiting is commonplace and infuriatingly successful, so the most prevalent language of the Internet is at its best cynicism and its worst outright meanness

Facebook is a good place to start since it is apparently too big to fail. The FCC in its recent Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) update, explicitly stated that using social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace were not in violation of CIPA. They even encouraged its use: “Declaring such sites categorically harmful to minors would be inconsistent with the Protecting Children in the Twenty-First Century Act’s focus on “educating minors about appropriate on-line behavior, including interacting with other individuals on social networking websites and in chat rooms, and cyberbullying awareness and response.”

The campaign, now getting under way, is for the University of California, Los Angeles. The campaign proclaims that U.C.L.A. is the home of “the optimists,” people who are risk-takers, rule-breakers and game-changers.

The campaign is the first for U.C.L.A. from an agency named 160 Over 90, which is based in Philadelphia and recently opened an office in Newport Beach, Calif.

That work underscores the growing presence of universities and colleges as advertisers in the media. Their goals include selling themselves to prospective students and the parents of those students, seeking donations from alumni, recruiting faculty members and improving their standings in various surveys.

job seekers applying to the state's Department of Corrections have been asked during interviews to log into their accounts and let an interviewer watch while the potential employee clicks through wall posts, friends, photos and anything else that might be found behind the privacy wall.

schools are requiring them to "friend" a coach or compliance officer,

it had reviewed 2,689 applicants via social media, and denied employment to seven because of items found on their pages

Make (and use) a Twitter account for one of your classes – You’ll need to provide us the link to the Twitter profile you’ve created (example: www.twitter.com/edudemic)

Use Skype (or similar service) to have your students connect with someone(s) for a project, interview, ‘pen pal’ class activity – Provide a short description of who your students connected with, and the purpose of their task (and if they used a service other than Skype, what service was it!?)

Make a Facebook page for one of your classes (and use it) – You’ll need to provide the link to the Facebook page that you’ve created (example: www.facebook.com/edudemic)