Sunday 20 December 2009

Leave 'Sexters' Alone!

So what if teens are sending nakes pictures to each other via cellphone? The real problem, Conor Friedersdorf argues, sets in when grownups get involved.
The suicide of a 13-year-old who sent a topless photo of herself to a crush is stoking renewed hysteria about teen "sexting," a misnamed phenomenon that hardly requires text and doesn't involve sex. What actually happens is that hormone-addled adolescents take naked photographs of themselves and send them to a crush via their cellphones or email accounts. Being teens, the images often spread like lunchtime gossip, especially after breakups. If you've got a kid in high school, the odds are quite high that he or she has seen photographs of a naked classmate—according to a recent PEW poll, one in seven teens with cellphones admit receiving naked pictures directly.
Tragic stories that begin with “sexting” are all too frequent when principals, police officers, or district attorneys get involved.
In most cases, teens who conceal their sexting from authority figures suffer negligible adverse consequences; they're hardly the first generation to play "I'll show you mine," and even Verizon's 3G network cannot yet transmit sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy...

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