Chances are, if you look at a teenage girl, you’re looking at someone who has been asked to send a naked picture of herself to a boy—this according to an article in the Baltimore Sun.
“We now know that teen sexting is fairly common,” said Jeff Temple, an associate professor and psychologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
Well, I wouldn’t say “every” teenager has sexted, but according to a recent survey, about 20 percent of teen boys and girls have sent such messages, the American Academy of Pediatrics notes, as the academy provides advice for talking with kids about general technology use and the sexting behavior in particular.
Teen sexting isn’t the same thing as illegally posting sexted pictures on the Internet. That is, I think messages sent from one smartphone to another are sexual in nature; messages sent from the receiver’s cellphone to a site where others, who were not the intended recipients, can view them are criminal in nature.
The issues with teen sexting
Whatever the number may be, teen sexting is common and on the rise, according to a Baltimore County law enforcement official quoted in the Sun’s article. Although asking a girl to send a naked picture may be how this gets started, the actual sending is what tends to lead to sexual behavior.
The chances a teenager will become sexually active as a high school junior are slightly higher for students who had engaged in sexting in the 12 previous months, Dr Temple found, comparing the proportion to that of teens who had not sent sexting messages to peers. However, he and his colleague, Hye Jeong Choi, could find no connection between sexting and later risky sexual behaviors. So, research gives us somewhat mixed results on teen sexting: It increases the likelihood they’ll engage in sex but has no impact on their tendency to engage in risky sex.
This has left adults, namely school counselors and law enforcement officials, vexed. Is this even a problem or just a normal part of growing up in a digital world of rapid information exchange? Is it pornography? Illegal? Consensual? Keep in mind, most sexting involves sending a selfie, and selfies all but imply consent.
So far scientists haven’t found any link between sexting and a child’s good or poor mental well being, Dr Temple said. So, for most adults, counseling and education seem to be the appropriate response to the increased level of teen sexting in the last two or three years.
Police and prosecutors “really do not have the resources to chase after sexting cases,” the Sun quoted Bob Lotter, the creator of a parental monitoring app called My Mobile Watchdog, which allows parents to block websites and the people who are communicating with their kids, as saying. He said parents have a responsibility to monitor their children’s technology use.
“We do need to do something about it, but criminalizing child behavior—I would think most people would agree it’s not the way to go,” the Sun quoted him as saying.
Which says, sexting—or the discovery of sexting by parents—opens up a window of opportunity to educate kids about the limits of online privacy, about the maintenance of proper boundaries, about the increased likelihood of sexual activity associated with sexting, and about the proper balance of different aspects of relationships.
Schools are dealing with it, in an age-appropriate manner, as part of courses on Internet or digital citizenship. But this is really a situation where schools need to take a subordinate role to that of parents.
