online harassment

The Last Week Tonight host highlights the horrors in a spoof old-school AOL ad

A shocking new survey by the a nonprofit research organization American Association of University Women found that nearly half of all students in seventh to 12th grades experienced sexual harassment in the last school year. A full 87% of those kids reported negative effects such as trouble sleeping, stomach pain, and even missing school.

The parents of a high school freshman in Amherst, N.Y., who killed himself told CNN that their son had endured pervasive antigay bullying beginning in fifth grade, both at school and particularly online. Jamey Rodemeyer, 14, committed suicide Monday in the Buffalo, N.Y., suburb. “He had the biggest heart in that little body,” Rodemeyer’s mother, Tracey, told CNN's Anderson Cooper Wednesday. “He was either loved so sincerely or he was bullied. There wasn’t much in between.” Much of the bullying Jamey faced, Tracey Rodemeyer said, occurred not in school but via Facebook and other social media sites. "Because people can access each other in numbers so readily — it’s still accessible for people to do their bullying.”

If hatred has to be taught, these schools should be earning gold stars.

If you're queer, online can be a great way to meet people even in the most unprepossessing places...