He earned his Ph.D. in criminal justice from Michigan State University in 2004, and joined the faculty at UW-Eau Claire in the same year. He is best known for his research into adolescent behavior on the internet, particularly cyberbullying and social networking. He is the co-director of the Cyberbullying Institute, and apart from authoring and editing literature on the subject, he has spoken at the White House and the FBI Academy and has appeared on CNN, NPR, in the New York Times, and al-Jazeera. He received the UW-Eau Claire Excellence in Scholarship Award in 2011.