Do Ya Think I'm Sexting?

The headlines are enough to make you want to pack up and move your family to an isolated cabin in the mountains:

• CBS News: "Sexting Shockingly Common Among Teens"
• MSBNC: "Sexting Surprise: Teens Face Child Porn Charges"
• ABC: "Sexting Teens Can Go Too Far"'

For those unfamiliar with the term, "sexting" refers to the act of using your cell phone camera to send a naked photo of yourself ... and the media would like you to believe (in the words of CBS News), that it's "shockingly common" among our teenage children.

I remember a few years ago when nude photos of High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens surfaced; they were meant to be a private, sexy surprise for boyfriend Zac Ephron (or Nickelodeon star Drake Bell, depending on the news report). To me, it seemed like just another dumb thing teen celebrities do, because those kids have money and jobs and grow up too fast.

Who knew that ordinary teens would think this is a good idea?

My first reaction upon learning of this trend was horror. I have a newly minted teenager and she's just purchased a new cellphone made for texting with her friends... and it has an excellent built-in camera.

My second thought was denial: This is not something MY daughter or her friends would engage in.

And then I reverted back to horror: Since she turned 13, she's been surprising us regularly with actions and decisions that seemed unthinkable just a few months ago. She's growing up... and all bets are off. While I was fairly certain that this isn't something she's doing now, I figured now was a good time to have another talk about cyber-safety.

I also wanted to know if this was an activity her friends or acquaintances had experienced.

"So I'm writing a blog post about 'sexting,'" I told her. "Is that something you've heard of?" I explained to her what it is and was relieved to see that she was as horrified by the idea as I was.

I told her that some insecure girls send naked photos of themselves to prove that they are "grown up"... or to impress boys. But that sending anything by cellphone (or posting to the web) can result in unintended consequences. I told her the tale of the girl who sent a photo to one boy and was shamed when he, in turn, sent it out to others -- until it had been seen by everyone in the school. I told her of the case where the kids who sent nude cameraphone photos had been arrested for distributing child pornography. 

We ended up having a good discussion about safe texting and some ground rules for using that new phone of hers: No texting during school hours, and no access to the phone in her bedroom at night. That's a good time for her to charge it -- out in our living room. 

I was reminded of another news report that also horrified parents around the country (and, incidentally sold a lot of newspapers and gave news networks a surge in ratings): That one indicated that an alarming number of middle school kids were engaging in oral sex... in school bathrooms, at parties and even at Bar Mitzvahs.

Once this report was published in the Washington Post, all the other news outlets jumped on it, and it became accepted wisdom -- even into this decade. When my daughter was in 5th grade, we attended a "Birds and the Bees" seminar, and the parents' orientation was kicked off with a video of an ABC News report on the subject.

That phenomenon has since been debunked in a nationwide study by the Guttmacher Institute, which found that today's teens are not more sexually active than they were in 1991.

From Newsweek: "Why is society constantly speculating about the most salacious stories about our children? Possibly because they confirm our worst fears about the values of the next generation and our growing sense that we really have no idea what's going on with our kids."

I have a feeling that the "sexting" news is a similar symptom of that, and I am not alone.

York University professor Peter Cummings describes it as "a modern variation of playing doctor or spin-the-bottle."

"Technology does change things, and there can be very serious consequences" Cumming said."A distinction has to be made between nudity and child porn." 

Sexting was also discussed at a recent meeting of the Family Online Safety Institute, which concluded that parents need to stop worrying about it and focus on problem solving. 

I want to believe that's what I was doing when I brought the subject up with my daughter. And I consider that talk to be just one part of a long conversation we'll be having for a long, long time.

Disclosure: I recently became a member of the Yahoo! Mother Board, and will be writing themed posts at their request each month. I am not being paid any monetary compensation for my participation. I did, however, receive a nice bouquet of flowers from Yahoo! for Mother's Day -- which I very much enjoyed.

The folks at Yahoo! have created a "Top 10" List for Cyber-Safety:

1.       Yahoo! Safely - a complete resource for all things cyber correct.

2.       Create a family pledge for Online Safety.

3.       Applying a filter to your child’s Yahoo! Mail account is simple by creating a family account to monitor your child’s use of Yahoo! and edit and maintain their account settings.

4.       Talk to the hand, Mr. Spammer. Yahoo! Mail uses the latest technology to combat spam and to help protect you from phishing and viruses. Yahoo!’s spam guard will filter out 97% of all things bad.

5.       You can flag photos on Flickr for abuse via the “Report Abuse” link that’s available in the footer of every page.

6.       4 things to know before your child goes online: http://info.yahoo.com/safely/us/yahoo/.

7.       Report abuse on any Yahoo! property at http://abuse.yahoo.com.

8.       Keep private things private. Manage your online profile.

9.       Yahoo!'s SafeSearch feature is designed to filter out explicit, adult-oriented content from Yahoo! Search results.

10.   Keep up to date with our safety experts blogs.