A new, dangerous trend is growing among teenagers: text messaging explicit photos of themselves, also known as sexting. Students as young as 12 are exchanging salacious pictures and messages through their cell phones.
"A picture got out of somebody else's older sister and that kinda spread like wildfire through our school," said a tenth grader.
The phenomenon is raging as wildly as their hormones. It's known as sexting or sex texting, sending lewd messages and pictures through a cell phone. "Nude body pictures, topless, bottomless, poses, inappropriate," said one tenth grader.
Its invaded middle schools as well. A seventh grader said, "It's not usually strangers. It's just somebody you've been talking to lately and they want to see more of you... literally."
Almost half of all 12 year olds have heard of this happening in their school. Both genders agree the boys are the instigators, but some girls play along.
"I think the girls, they just want to get their attention and usually it works," said an eighth grader. Another student in the same grade said, "Sometimes they'll say, 'Send me a picture of your boobs' or 'Send me a picture of your butt.'"
The risqué game has very real consequences. "The phones these days are like very good so they can just like send it to the Internet and they can put it on MySpace and other people can save it so it's like all over the place," said a seventh grader.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said, "Once it's out there, while they might think it's just their classmates looking at these images, well, it's also the dirty old men. It's the pedophiles. It's those that want to sexually prey on children who take these images, who collect them and spread them worldwide."
It's a very real fear for parents. "It's alarming. They're not protected." "It's really disappointing! It's hard to be a parent today."
The kids said very often it starts as a girlfriend sending a boyfriend a picture, but then they break up, he shows a friend and it quickly gets forwarded around. It's a felony for children under 18 to not only receive one of these pictures on their phone, but taking a photo and sending it could lead to pornography production and distribution charges.
The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy reported last month that a survey of 1,280 teens and young adults found that 20 percent of the teens said they had sent or posted nude or semi nude photos or videos of themselves. That number was slightly higher for teenage girls — 22 percent — vs. boys — 18 percent.
Make sure you talk to your kids about this…it’s effect on them, and their friends. Several kids nationally are being charged and listed as a “Pedophile”.
One of my suggestions is to do “random” inventories of your kids phones. Check with your carrier to see what (if any) parental control features they offer… you can also lock up you child until they’re 18 ;)
-SuperDale (no relation to SuperDell!)
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