By Ysa Marie Cayabyab

AI-generated sexual content and platform-driven amplification are intensifying online exploitation, disproportionately harming women and children across Southeast Asia. Existing moderation approaches remain largely reactive, leaving systemic risks unresolved. Stronger governance frameworks, platform accountability, and safety-by-design measures can help prevent harm. Through regional cooperation, ASEAN is well-positioned to strengthen coordinated safeguards, protect vulnerable users, and establish shared standards for the responsible and ethical use of AI across the region.

By  Cachia, R., Villar Onrubia, D., Barreda Angeles,et al.

The European Commission is strongly committed to creating a safer digital environment for all citizens, specifically minors and youth. In the European Union Member States and Norway, 26 out of 28 countries have legislation addressing bullying and cyberbullying, with 13 providing specific definitions. While cyberbullying continues to increase, there is no consensus yet on a singular definition. An agreed definition would enable better measurement and monitoring cyberbullying and the effectiveness of related interventions. The widespread adoption of new technologies, like generative artificial intelligence introduce new factors that should be considered when defining cyberbullying.

HIGHLIGHTS ➔ The European Commission is committed to creating a safer digital environment for all citizens, especially minors and youth. ➔ While the prevalence of cyberbullying continues to grow, there is no consensus yet on a standardised definition. ➔ An agreed definition would i) support and inform policy making for a more effective response to cyberbullying by facilitating coordination and a globally cohesive approach, and ii) enable more accurate data collection and analysis, helping researchers and policymakers to track trends, assess the effectiveness of interventions, and make informed decisions. ➔ Almost all European Union Member States have legislation addressing bullying or cyberbullying, with 13 providing specific definitions. ➔ The rapid evolution and uptake of digital technologies (e.g., generative AI) is giving rise to new kinds of behaviours that pose challenges for defining, identifying and addressing cyberbullying. Doing so effectively requires consulting with a broad range of stakeholders, including minors, young people and vulnerable groups. 

By Rebecca Ward

This systematic review explores everyday sadism, a subclinical form of cruelty expressed through socially acceptable behaviours such as trolling, workplace bullying, and schadenfreude. Distinct from criminal and consensual sexual sadism, it is examined within the Dark Tetrad framework, complementing narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Synthesising over 85 studies using PRISMA guidelines, the review evaluates evolutionary, cognitive-behavioural, and reinforcement models, psychometric measures, and experimental paradigms. Findings highlight its prevalence across relationships, workplaces, and online spaces, and outline ethical challenges, interventions, and directions for cross-cultural and longitudinal research.

By Max Schanzenbach and Kimberly Yuracko

The war between Hamas and Israel has caused havoc in higher education. Amid student unrest, alumni pressure, congressional hearings, civil rights investigations, and student lawsuits, universities stand at a crossroads. The current situation, in which most private universities unevenly regulate student speech under ambiguous student codes, is not sustainable politically or legally. A tsunami of litigation and regulatory actions has already begun. One increasingly favored response is for private universities to more vigorously enforce existing codes or expand their scope. An alternative is for private universities to deregulate student expression and commit by contract to the First Amendment. This paper argues for the latter approach largely on pragmatic grounds. In essence, our argument is grounded in the realities of university organizational behavior which make it difficult for universities to enforce speech codes in a manner that complies with their regulatory and contractual obligations. Ambiguous codes, informal process, and political homogeneity among decision-makers inevitably results in inconsistent regulation of speech. These problems can be mitigated by committing to the First Amendment, which would both clarify and constrain university speech regulations by incorporating a large body of caselaw, some of which bears directly on higher education. Such clarity would limit the scope of university action, provide a basis for legally required consistency, and be more readily amenable to external review by courts and federal regulators. Experience with the First Amendment in public universities suggests that such a commitment will not have deleterious consequences for campus life.

By: Youngjin Stephanie Hong, Marci Ybarra, Angela S. García. 

Studies link intensified immigration enforcement to reduced safety net participation among mixed-status families, but less is known about how this varies by settlement duration. Bridging research on immigrant settlement and system avoidance, we theorize that the impacts are strongest among immigrants with shorter US residency. To test this, we analyze whether exposure to deportation threat, measured as removals under Secure Communities per one thousand noncitizens, is associated with safety net use among citizen children of likely undocumented Latinas in California, using a two-way fixed effects regression. We find that increased removal rates are negatively related to the child’s participation in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children; Medicaid; and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families among mothers with less than five years of residency, but not among those with longer durations, relative to US-born mothers. These findings suggest that deportation threat may be especially burdensome for recent arrivals.