What exactly is “sexting”? This topic has been in the news, on television and newspapers recently.
“Sexting” is sending nude or partially nude photos through one’s cell phone.
According to recent reports, 1 in 5 teens do this. What are the top two reasons they do it? They do it because they say it is fun. Many teenage girls also send these pics to their boyfriends as a sexy present.
Depending on the age of the person, it can be considered child pornography. Parents are in an outrage over this issue and rightly so. I don’t believe these kids realize what happens when digital images are sent out and how far they can travel. Not only that, but it is illegal.
In Ohio, state law says that anyone taking or sending nude pictures of a minor can be jailed on a felony and have to register as a sex offender. This includes teens under 18 sending pics of each other.
So, what do you do about this growing trend? How do you handle this with your own teenagers? Do you have controls on their phones which allow you to see everything they are doing already? Or do you simply monitor their phones periodically?
What about the issues of privacy and trust? Do you feel it is an invasion of their privacy to read through all their texts? Parents are very divided on this issue. Many parents simply do not believe their children would ever do that and yet this trend is spreading like wildfire. Scary, inappropriate wildfire.
I’ve asked people on Facebook and Twitter and also asked my friends about monitoring their children’s texting. The majority seem to think it is worth the risk of invasion of privacy. Safety seems to be worth that risk. What about kids being sneaky though and doing it anyway and deleting the offending texts?
I guess the only thing we can do is educate, educate, educate and hope for the best and pray for the best. All we can do is tell them about the dangers and the law. That and keep doing random cell phone checks? I think so. 
Amazon has a book you might find interesting about children and texting.
Written on May 15th, 2009 at 9:56 am by Amy
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