What happened to the time when if you liked a girl at school you would simply pass her a note to let her know? These days there is a disturbing new trend with teenagers flirting in cyberspace by sending nude or semi-nude photos from cell phonesto cell phone: instead of "texting," they call it "sexting."
Sexting, according to Wikipedia- Sexting (a portmanteau of sex and texting) is the act of sending sexually explicit messages or photos electronically, primarily between cell phones. Sexting was reported as early as 2005 in the Sunday Telegraph Magazine, and has since been described as taking place worldwide. It has been reported in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and Great Britain.
While many of these teens send the images with the intent of certain eyes only, the X-rated offerings are usually not kept by the boyfriend or girlfriend, the photos often wind up being shared and disseminated to other people. What teens don't realize is just how serious the consequences can be. The dangerous combination of teenagers behaving provocatively and impulsively is not new, but the accessibility to the technology is. With cell phone cameras, they have been handed a tool so easy to use for some it's impossible to pass up.
The risqué game has very real consequences. The phones these days take very good photographs and can be sent to the Internet and put it on MySpace pages where other people can view them and save them to their page. Once they are out there, while they might think only their friend is viewing them, they and everyone else has to be concerned that many other people including dirty old men, pedophiles, and sexual predators that collect these images and prey on children are viewing them too.
To combat this growing trend, prosecutors are looking to put people in jail for a felony crime for taking pornographic photos of minors and distributing them through a text.
As technology continues to change the ways teens communicate, parents need to monitor who their teens are talking to, and more importantly what they are talking about and sending out. It's really important that parents talk to their teens and help them develop their emotional skills and warn them of the dangers of sending their image to anyone, even someone they care about.
References
Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexting
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Great analysis Mark. Sex-ting is a very scaring thing because it is real. I have talked to my children about this topic and I do check thier phones! Great posting and I will make my kids read it!!! Sometimes when it comes from someone other then mom it sinks in better. Thanks.
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