Do You Know If Your Teen Is SexTexting?

The most recent phenomenon to strike young people, and provoke a moral panic across the nation, has its roots firmly grounded in modern technology – ‘sexting’ (the exchange of text messages containing sexual content) has grown increasingly popular amongst teenagers in recent years. On the surface, the premise of teenagers sending each other messages with sexual undertones seems relatively harmless, as they are simply young, naive and driven wild by their hormones. However, this new trend of so-called ‘sexting’ has an enormous amount of dangers – many of which should be avoided at all costs.

The most striking example can be found in America, where three young men were charged with possession of child pornography, as some of their underage female friends had texted them sexually provocative images. The law will strike down hard upon anyone caught with sexualized images of girls under the age of consent, regardless of the connection between the girl herself and the recipient of the messages. For example, could such a girl’s boyfriend allow these images to fall into the wrong hands, he may well be vulnerable to legal prosecution by the state.

What high schoolers are doing today is much different than what the baby boomer generation did growing up. Speaking with my niece on several occassions (who is 15) often gives me an earful of what is going on with the young people within her school. Some girls feel they need to sex-text in order for boys to like them, or to gain their attention.  Girls who are self-confident are less likely to sex-text.   However not only are teens sex-tings they are having sex at a younger age, and having sex with a partner who is infected with an STD.  At a particular high school in Memphis sex-tings is hughely popular among the least of the things that is popular within this schools population.

This risk of such images ‘falling into the wrong hands’ is also a significant concern. One could argue that if a girl close to the age of consent is comfortable with texting naked pictures of herself to her boyfriend, then that truly is no concern. The risk, however, becomes evident when, either accidentally or otherwise, these images are then passed onto other young people. This is an extremely frequent occurrence amongst teenagers, known as when an image ‘goes viral.’ In other words, the image spreads like wildfire from one phone to another, until the subject of these sexualized photos will feel she has been humiliated in front of her entire high school- perhaps even the entire internet community.

            Therefore, it is undeniable that even those who have a stable relationship should think twice before they resort to such ‘sexting.’ It not only carries the risk of legal prosecution, should the female be under the age of consent, but can also lead to significant trauma if the images become widespread across the local community or internet. This, unfortunately, has happened on an innumerable amount of occasions to many young girls before. ‘Sexting’ can only result in a great deal of embarrassment and emotional pain on their part.