Many schools are even providing every student who enrolls at a school with one. While there are obviously endless benefits of cultivating a technologically literate generation, this one-to-one approach to technology has some major drawbacks, critics say – especially when the students take these devices home with them.

Out from under the watchful eye of a school’s Wi-Fi, which usually restricts what websites are accessible, students have unlimited access to the worldwide web. This means that we are potentially handing out students a tool for bullying, for looking up pornography, for illegally purchasing guns or drugs, and for communicating with terrorist organizations like ISIS. The group has a strong presence on social media and frequently uses Twitter to recruit new members. There are about 46,000 active ISIS supporters on Twitter, according to the most recent figures from the FBI.

Sara Rubin, a psychologist at John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, Illinois, worries what students are doing with these devices.

“Twitter and Facebook use is easier to monitor at school. However, the students take those iPads home with them and theoretically can use them all night if they wanted,” she said in a phone interview.

Rubin also said parents often find it difficult to monitor how their children use these devices at home.

Experts have found that there is no specific profile for potential ISIS recruits through social media.

In October of last year, three Denver teenage girls were caught attempting to run away to Syria to join ISIS. In November, a 20-year-old college student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham successfully traveled to Syria to join the movement. These young people are among more than 150 U.S. citizens who have attempted to join ISIS, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Worldwide, more than 3,400 people from western countries are now ISIS fighters, CNN reported in February.

David Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Senate committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that it’s difficult to profile exactly the type of person who is likely to sympathize with or join ISIS. Some have criminal backgrounds, while others are educated. “There is no one-size-fits all,” he said.

The parents of all four young people reported that they later found communication between their children and ISIS members on their children’s social media accounts. Ah, okay. A definitive link. Might be worth mentioning higher.

One thing all ISIS recruits do have in common is that they like the message ISIS puts forth. “ISSI is excellent at messaging,” Gartenstein-Ross said. “They have a winner’s messaging. They project strength.”

Rubin believes that this message could be especially appealing to young teenagers.

“Terrorist organizations’ effectiveness at recruiting this population is in part because of how much time teens are spending online without adult supervision,” she said. “It’s also because the message from these organizations is really resonating with teens who are looking to be a part of something bigger and form their identities. Their message is very enticing and warm when you feel isolated from your peers and are trying to form both your personal identity and peer group over the Internet.”

Senator Ron Johnson (R.-Wisc.), chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, has called for more aggressive solutions to this growing problem.

“In order to understand the nature of the current threat to America, it is important to understand these changing recruitment methods and the challenges they pose,” he said.

Rubin thinks that better education on Internet safety for students could help illustrate for them how ISIS manipulates them in its messaging.

Gartenstein-Ross also believes that debunking ISIS’s messaging is also part of the solution. In order hamper the effectiveness of ISIS, the U.S. needs to begin attacking the group’s persona of strength, which it too can do through social media. “The U.S. may not be the best voice to deliver this message,” Gartenstein-Ross said. “But it can provide the media with reliable information that it can use to show when and where ISIS is failing.”

In the meantime, Rubin urges schools and parents to better supervise students’ use of technology. “It’s a school issue, but it’s also a parental issue and parents need to do a better job of supervising their kids.”

Parents and schools have begun taking a more proactive approach to combatting bullying in schools and online. Consideration of this new potential threat to kids’ safety and well-being is long overdue. Blindly handing technology to kids without first educating them on the dangers that exist on the Internet is irresponsible. We’ve taught them about predators on the street and to be vigilant in real life, but as more and more of our time is spent online and on social media, we need to start educating kids on the dangers that exist on these platforms.

Medill News Service reporters interviewed red carpet attendees at the GI Film Festival, including military film icon R. Lee “Gunny” Ermey, about their favorite military films of all time.

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WASHINGTON – Nearly nineteen thousand—18,900 to be exact—U.S. servicemen and women were sexually assaulted last year. “That’s 18,900 too many,” according to Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter.

“Even though sexual assault is a disgrace in any form and happens too often across the country—including on college campuses, it’s a particular challenge and a particular disgrace to our institution, the military,” Carter told an audience of ROTC students from D.C.-area colleges at Georgetown University Wednesday.

“We have serious work to do and I need you to say, enough. Enough to dirty jokes, to excessive drinking, to hazing, to sexual advances, and to any suggestion that coercion is appropriate,” Carter said.

Carter said technology is playing a role in how victims and the people who help them are treated by their peers. He urged the students to be just as active in combating this kind of treatment online as they would be in real life.

“I trust most of you would intervene if you saw somebody being bullied around campus, but too many people let that stuff slide online,” Carter said. “We can’t allow someone who’s doing the right thing whether it’s reporting an assault or standing up to stop one to be belittled on Facebook, ignored in chow hall, passed over for promotion or mocked in officer’s club. That’s counter to the ethos you signed up for, and it’s just plain wrong.”

Tackling the problem of sexual assault in the military has become a top priority for Carter and for Congress. Last month Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, and Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., reintroduced the Ruth Moore Act, which aims to provide veterans benefits to survivors of sexual assault.

The bill is named for Ruth Moore, a Maine resident who was raped twice while serving in the Navy. Moore’s attacker was never punished.

After being discharged, Moore fought for more than 20 years to receive her benefits. The bill aims to ease the burden of proof standards, which now say veterans must show that their trauma is connected their time in the military. The proposed law seeks to make a veteran’s own testimony of events qualify as substantial proof for benefits.

“We’re not giving up until every victim of sexual assault in the military gets the acknowledgement and recognition of their post assault disabilities, fair treatment in the claims process, and the benefits they deserve as veterans who served their country with honor,” Moore said in a statement on March 27.

Pingree and Tester originally proposed the bill in 2013. It passed unanimously in the House but never came up for a vote in the Senate.

Other laws have also aimed to help survivors of sexual assault in the military. Most notable is the watershed 2013 Military Justice Improvement Act, which overhauled the investigation and prosecution of sexual assaults in the military.

Carter said 100 congressionally mandated provisions and 50 Secretary of Defense directives have also contributed to changing the prevalence of sexual assault in the military.  His speech coincided with National Sexual Assault Awareness Month.